Mordechai Benshemesh (Tel Aviv, 16 January 1911 – Melbourne, 22 December 1993) was a noted architect who practiced in Melbourne, Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s. Born in Palestine, he was one of a number of often Jewish émigré architects who migrated to Australia both before and after World War II who brought a different approach to architecture, as well as an appreciation of apartment living. He is best known as the architect for one of the city’s first high rise modernist apartment blocks, Edgewater Towers in St Kilda. Biography Mordechai Benshemesh was born on 16 January 1911, in Tel Aviv, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire. His father, Shmuel-Mosh Sekatrov, had emigrated from Ukraine, to Palestine changing the family name to Benshemesh. He studied at the Polytechnical School in Tel Aviv between 1930-33 before traveling to London where he completed diplomas from the British Institute of Engineering Technology and the International Correspondence School. At the age of 28, perhaps sensing the coming war and possibly under the ruse of being part of a Palestinian soccer club, he migrated to Australia, arriving on 13 June 1939. He spent the next ten years working with numerous Melbourne architects; most notably Arthur W. Plaisted (1940–41) and Harry Raymond 'Ray' Johnson (1946–49). Benshemesh was naturalised as an Australian citizen on 6 December 1946. While working for Johnson, he was the lead designer, producing a string of apartment projects in St Kilda and Elwood. When Johnson retired from architecture Benshemesh opened his own architectural firm in 1950. Beginning with the then typical 2-3 storey walk-up flats in the St Kilda-Toorak area, by the end of the decade he was designing high-rise apartments, and then office towers as well. His late 1940s and 1950s apartment projects such as Barkly Lodge were almost Art Deco in style, characterised by cream brick in overlapping unadorned square volumes, with rectangular steel-framed windows and simple projecting balconies and stair towers. His two St Kilda high rise projects were by contrast in thin planes of all-white reinforced concrete, but still with a complex rectangular character of projecting blocks and balconies. Later projects were more typical for their period. Benshemesh died on 22 December 1993. Notable works Edgewater Towers Edgewater Towers located at 12 Marine Parade, St Kilda, was constructed in 1959-1960. When construction was complete the tower was advertised in The Age as "everything you'd