Lester Bunbury

Lester Bunbury ‘Bun’ was a significant figure in the early years of design’s professional development in Australia. A colourful and flamboyant man, he received no formal design education but cut his teeth under the tutelage of Fred Ward in Ward’s Design Unit at Melbourne’s Myer Emporium from 1935 to 1939. His time with Ward was interrupted by WW2, after which he was engaged by the Australian Army in 1947 to travel to Japan to give design lectures and assistance to the British Commonwealth Occupational Forces rebuilding Hiroshima.

Returning to Melbourne, he established his own design practice, ‘Design Technicians’, and employed young architect Kevin Borland. He designed the ‘Herald Atomic Age Exhibition (1948) and the ‘Fashion Fair’ (1950) which attracted a record 40,000 + visitors. Other smaller exhibitions followed, including the Royal Robes travelling exhibition (1954), alongside designing Dining and Lounge suites for Doyle Productions for which he won first and second prize in the Guild of Furniture Manufacturers Design Competition (1953). His return to large-scale projects came with the ‘Chemex’ exhibition (1956), where his geodesic dome was widely praised by Robin Boyd.

Bun designed furniture and interiors for some of the most important public architectural projects of the time, including hospitals for Buchan, Laird and Buchan and the Arbitration Courts with Stephenson & Turner, which later led to the role of in-house designer in 1959 for William Latchford & Sons. When working for CEMAC in the early sixties he relocated to Sydney and worked with the furniture company Framac. Some notable projects of this period were Bankstown Square (1966) Goldfields House (1967) and Australia Square (1968).

Bun also wrote and lectured on design and was an inaugural member of the Society of Designers for Industry (SDI) in 1948. He taught at RMIT, Melbourne University Architecture Atelier, the National School of Design and East Sydney Technical College.

Bun’s contribution to the design profession cannot be underestimated. A contemporary of Ron Rosenfeldt, Grant Featherston and Clement Meadmore, he was described by Robin Boyd as “one of the most spirited industrial designers Australia has produced”. With a practice that encompassed design for furniture, interiors, exhibitions, products and corporate branding, he retired in the late seventies, after a successful career spanning four decades.