Federation Square

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The Civic Plaza seen from Swanston Strret
The LAB/Bates Smart scheme for Melbourne’s Federation Square, launched a developed design recently, is not to be considered iconic, says Norman Day.

above The Civic Plaza seen from Swanston Street.

Like most provincial cities, Melbourne is ill-informed about architecture and its citizens have debated the new Federation Square with scant respect for the creative integrity of its authors.

Sociologist John Carroll calls it “a mixture of Le Corbusier on a bad day and deflated German expressionism … neither pleasing to the eye nor striking”. Pollster Gary Morgan has called it a dogs’ breakfast, the National Trust’s Simon Molesworth thinks it is uncomplimentary to our past, ex-mayor Kevin Chamberlain believes that the design should be changed by public vote—some sort of collective acclamation—to achieve a populist design.

Others more closely associated with the project have remarked that the scheme is light on ideas, theoretically sparse and needing some remarkable effort to lift it beyond the banal.

At a recent release of the developed design by the architects LAB with Bates Smart (with Premier Jeff Kennett as MC) we saw a relatively underdeveloped concept which has been accepted by the State government and city council and will now step into documentation phase (although the building’s concrete slab base, to roof the railway yards, is already well into construction).

The shattered geometry of the plan allows for loose-fit placement of the museums, galleries, restaurants, bars and a plaza over the site. Two glass buildings, called shards, signpost a view back from the proposed civic plaza into the main facade of St Paul’s Cathedral. Ramps and long runs of stairs deliver pedestrians from the ‘wind garden’ (which faces Melbourne’s infamous south-west ice winds) down to the Yarra River. The architectural expression appears to be on hold; walls are an undefined collage of stone, glass and metals. A set of concrete walls has been designed to provide low-energy cooling and a gigantic metal frame will cover an atrium which appears, from illustrations, to be a shopping mall.

It is a dense project. Barely a third of the site is open plaza and much of it is walled by a three-level collection of galleries, cinemas, bars, shops and SBS accommodation.

The planning of the complex is fashionably inspired by the Jewish museum in Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind (a juror for this competition). But the Square is more constrained and less fluid than Berlin; more a product of drafting equipment, with set square angles and collisions from a compass, than a well-argued architectural philosophy.

People have noticed similarities between this and Bilbao’s Guggenheim. One thing worth remembering is that this project is located over an old railway yard on reclaimed city space—just as Gehry’s gallery sits beside a container yard at the back end of that dreary little town.

However, Bilbao is an emblem, a hard-argued piece of contemporary architecture which elaborates Gehry’s long-standing fascination with fish, organic forms, shiny materials and an almost obscene appetite for shaping unexpected structures. His building has changed sleepy Bilbao forever. LAB’s square will not infringe on Melbourne like that. It will be a flat composition of low-rise buildings around an open space— evolution not revolution; part of a continuum for Melbourne rather than a sharp vision of fresh ideas.

This will be more theme park than compelling urban design.

That direction places the project among recent developments like the casino and most of Southbank, Melbourne Central, the Jolimont railway yards housing and (what we know of) many Docklands proposals. Federation Square will add another layer on the city. Despite some minor nuances of twisted geometry and collided facades, it will be part of—not apart from—the norm.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Norman Day is a Melbourne architect, writer and RMIT adjunct professor.

 

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Last modified: 30-Jan-98.
 

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Published online: 1 Nov 1998

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Architecture Australia, November 1998

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