Wundenberg's Studio recycles Walter Griffin waste incinerator in Adelaide's Thebarton as classic recording studio
`Classic recovered equipment was part of recording studios set up by Lewis Wunderberg (bottom right) in the heritage-listed Thebarton incinerator building (top right).
Lewis Wundenberg, an Adelaide recording engineer and producer, recycled the former Thebarton waste incinerator in Adelaide’s inner western suburbs as a studio voted best at the 2019 South Australian Music Awards.
The state-heritage-listed brick Thebarton incinerator building had the distinction of being created in the 1930s by American architect Walter Burley Griffin, famous for planning and designing the city of Canberra. Opened in 1936, it was one of several architecturally significant reverberatory incinerators around Australia that Griffin and colleague Eric Milton Nicholls designed during the Great Depression.
Decommissioned as an incinerator in the 1960s, the building had several uses including a tenant who converted the bottom furnace level into a recording studio. Wundenberg hit on the studio after answering an unusual Gumtree advertisement. The building ticked all the needs for a recording studio: air-tight, windowless with thick walls, high ceilings – and no neighbours. Wundenberg expanded with a second studio in the upper levels of the incinerator, with rehearsal rooms in an adjacent building.
The history of building itself was matched with pieces at play in Wundenberg’s studio. These include pieces of once-prized analogue equipment rescued from liquidators, retiring producers and demolished TV studios. “This mixing desk is a Neve,” Wundenberg told The Adelaide Review. “Apparently the BBC commissioned it – these things were like the Rolls Royce of mixing desks, and you could custom configure everything to your needs. Billy Thorpe bought it somewhere along the way and had it at his home studio for years.”
A key addition to the second studio was a custom-made soundproof vocal booth salvaged from NWS Channel 9's demolished North Adelaide studios, complete with autographs from presenters like Jane Doyle and Catriona Rowntree scrawled on its doors.
Wundenburg’s Studios also provided services for film, commercial radio, TV, podcasts, audiobooks and anything needing sound professionally recorded or mixed. Previous clients included Netflix, Mazda Australia, Bolinda Publishing, Seeley International, Uber, Hoyts, BBC, Journey Beyond and the Australian Space Agency,