It will go down as one of Canberra's most expensive renovations, on one of Canberra's most iconic buildings.
University House is finally ready to reopen, after a mammoth five-year restoration process that took twice as long and cost more than three times the original estimate.
The mid-century gem in the middle of the sprawling Australian National University campus copped the brunt of a violent hailstorm that tore through the capital in January 2020, and the initial insurance bill came in at $30 million.
This has since spiralled to a final bill of $106 million, to restore the building to its original splendour, and bring it up to modern-day standards.
An extra $11 million from the university's own coffers, as a "betterment investment", was used to fully electrify and convert it to a net-zero building.
Both figures were "within scope" of the agreed amounts between the insurer and the university.
The building is now set to reopen to the university community next month, with its official opening in September timed to coincide with the university's 80th anniversary.
The paradox of this heritage building is that, thanks to its mid-century building standards, complete with a vast and warren-like Cold War-era bomb shelter running under the whole structure, it will likely be the last one standing should the apocalypse eventuate.
It sure felt like an apocalypse when the freak hailstorm hit on January 20, 2020, just weeks after the last embers of the Black Saturday bushfires had burned out.
The storm lasted just 12 minutes, and cut a swath across Canberra's inner suburbs, writing off thousands of cars, shattering skylights and windows, and causing major damage to infrastructure on the ANU campus.
University House, the heritage-listed campus hub that was opened in 1954 by the Duke of Edinburgh, was one of the most high-profile victims, and likely to be the last to finally emerge fully repaired.
The golf-ball-sized hailstones smashed the building's original terracotta roof tiles and copper roof sheeting, and the insurance bill from that storm alone would have been in the millions.
Another heavy downpour two weeks later flowed through the holes in the roof and down broken gutters, causing the entire building to be evacuated and, eventually, emptied of all its contents.
These included heritage furniture, priceless artworks and decades worth of detritus, much of it stored in the underground tunnels.
As luck would have it, University House had been poised to embark on a massive renovation project leading up to its 70th anniversary in 2024, with tenders released just before the storm.
But life was plunged into uncertainty, as just two months later, Canberra, along with the rest of the world, was in lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
By then, all of the furniture and contents had been placed in storage, and water damage to the electrical and fire systems meant the building was unsafe for people to occupy.
It was another 18 months before the task of assessing the damage began in earnest, and work was finally underway by March 2023.
Since then, the building has been completely restored and thoroughly modernised, an epic project that has seen the grand dining hall stripped of its original panelling, mould cleared away, flooring and wall timber reinstalled, and the entire building electrified in line with the ANU's Below Zero Program.
University House operates as a boutique hotel as well as student accommodation and ceremonial hub, and the place now has upgraded kitchens, refreshed dining and study spaces, new lifts and better accessibility and, best of all for mid-century design enthusiasts, a full suite of restored Fred Ward furniture adorning many of the hotel and study rooms.
House master Peter Kanowski has been overseeing the restoration works for the past five years, alongside his own demanding schedule as an eminent professor of Forestry.
He has found himself poring over fabric swatches, inspecting new terrazzo flooring and watching newly cleaned artworks emerge from climate-controlled packaging.
He said that as a ceremonial hub and cultural wonder, the long absence had been felt, and described the building as playing a central role as a "soft" asset for the university, "contributing substantially to its social capital and institutional standing".
Project manager Alex Morgan of Hindmarsh Constructions described the entire project as like "changing out the engine under the hood".
It involved countless meticulous processes of conservation and restoration, as well as retrofitting modern building services and major structural modifications.
The project has involved restoring the original walnut flooring and rehabilitating the koi pond that Bob Hawke famously jumped into as a student.
In the dining hall, retaining the acoustic tiles on the ceiling involved finding lightweight paper to lie between the tiles and the timber.
The team eventually settled on something akin to the paper used to wrap butter, and printed it with the exact colour of the existing ceiling.
"The original ceiling tiles were a little bit irregular, and we needed to essentially install by hand," he said.
"It's a very small detail, I know, but it's a huge amount of work that we went into to try and match and manage the heritage architect's requirements."
Just a month or so out from opening, the restoration team were starting to unbox some of the artworks, ready for rehanging. Already in place in the dining hall was Leonard French's monumental Regeneration, which had dominated the space since 1992, along with a 10-part series of his work, entitled Journey.
Once removed, the walls had revealed the stains of decades' worth of pipe smoke, and the acoustic panels on the ceiling required special treatment.
Now, with new paint and light streaming through the windows, Regeneration fairly glows.
When it opened in the mid-1950s, there wasn't much art to be had in the capital; the National Gallery of Australia was still 28 years away from opening, and University House stood out for its extensive art collection and stylish fittings.
The building, designed by Brian Lewis, was considered an important statement at the time it opened - of architecture, landscape design, post-war optimism and Cold War pragmatism.
Not everyone loved it at first; at its opening in 1954, Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies famously said that it looked "like an ... orphanage from some angles, and a seaside block of flats from the other".
He was proved wrong as the years went on, and over time, University House has become an icon of mid-century design, and received a medal from the Institute Architects before it even opened.
The academic and social hub of the campus, it was the venue for graduations, grand dinners, the awarding of doctorates, study and retreat, and social gatherings.
The bomb shelter beneath was designed to protect everyone in the building should the city come under attack, but above ground, the house was a triumph.
Over the years, it has hosted legions of distinguished guests, graduate students and public service riff-raff.
