Architecture of Melbourne

[12][13] The original inhabitants, the Wurundjeri were known to have created temporary structures called Mia-mia out of bark, saplings and timber and were observed by Protector of Aborigines William Thomas to be comfortably housed.

Part of St Francis Church on the corner of Lonsdale and Elizabeth streets dates to 1842, the simple construction is Melbourne's oldest Gothic revival building, though its original form was later significantly augmented and altered.

[38] A two-storey colonial regency style shop on the corner of King and Latrobe Street (1850) is recognised as the oldest known building in the Hoddle grid with an unmodified original appearance.

[39] The Duke of Wellington Hotel on Flinders Street (1850), another modest two-storey Georgian style building, is also believed to date to this era and is cited as the oldest public bar in the Hoddle grid.

Locally quarried bluestone (basalt) was a distinctive construction material used from Melbourne's earliest days however it became increasingly popular during the gold rush for institutional buildings due to its heavy rusticated effect and its stern, foreboding appearance.

HM Prison Pentridge (1851) is particularly notable as one of the largest gold rush era bluestone buildings as well as for its distinctive castellated Tudor appearance incorporating medieval style watch towers, arrow slits and panopticons.

[114] Joseph Reed's design for Collins Street Independent Church (1866) (now St Michael's) is notable not only as the earliest examples of elaborate polychrome brickwork in Australia (a style that became highly popular by the 1880s) but also for its unusual floorplan and tower.

It features a sloping floor with tiered seating, and a steep gallery behind a ring of high aches on slender cast iron columns, ensuring good sight lines.

The 1880s saw the price of land start to boom, and London banks were eager to extend loans to men of vision who capitalised on this by speculation, and grand, elaborate offices, hotel and department stores in the city, and endless suburban subdivisions.

[124] Designed by English architect William Butterfield, it occupied a prominent site in the heart of the city on Flinders Street at the entrance of Princes Bridge making it a highly visible landmark even without its later completed spires.

[147] The Former Priory Ladies School (1890) in Alma Road St Kilda demonstrates a rare shift away from the gothic idiom to the American Romanesque, following EG Kilburn's visit to the United States.

Elleker and Kilburn's Melbourne City Building (1888) is an unusual early Queen Anne design which forms a pair with the towered Colonial Bank Hotel (1888) across Balcombe Place.

[166] Renaissance Revival of the gold rush period continued to be popular even with the larger banks and socieities from the Smith and Johnson designed Melbourne Savage Club building (1884-1885)[167] to the six storey Former Money Order Post Office (1890).

[168] However academic classicism was often seen as too restrained for the boom style and architects sometimes gave them a more baroque flavour, as in Sum Kum Lee at Chinatown (1887-1888) by George De Lacy Evans[169] and William Salway's design for the Collins Street Mercantile Bank (1888).

[183] Melbourne's tram and railway systems boomed during the period, resulting in many significant station and terminus buildings mostly constructed in red brick of the Queen Anne style.

The local architects sought technical advice from Fazlur Khan of renowned American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), spending 10 weeks at their Chicago office in 1968.

Melbourne's modern legacy began to give way in the 1980s with the culmination of a strong postmodern movement as many decried the continued loss of the city's cultural character and European charm.

It was the first major project to successfully integrate the old and new, preserving and restoring a significant Victorian streetscape including Grosvenor Chambers (1888), Leonard Terry's Campbell House (1877) and a row of three storey Lloyd Tayler designed terraces (1884).

One Collins' stepped form, setback style, elegantly minimilist square windows and cut stone-like texture established a strong reputation for emerging firm Denton Corker Marshall (DCM).

Firstly their work in 222 Exhibition Street (TAC House) (1986–88) made an explicit statement against the dominance of glass curtain wall design of the late international style using open steel grill elements, scale, symmetry and a differentiated podium.

90 Collins Street (1987) by Peck von Hartel preserved a Victorian era professional building and mirroring it to create a symmetrical central entrance under a mock stone faced North American style stepped tower, a design model applied successfully by New York's similarly dated 712 Fifth Avenue.

Southbank Promenade designed by Denton Corker Marshall in 1990 featured smoothly cut bluestone and metal ornaments which were highly fashionable and helped revived Melbourne's southern riverfront.

Kurokawa's original design for Melbourne Central including its podium featuring a geodesic dome, concave and large faceted oriel windows were lost to remodelling done by ARM in 2006.

Designed by architects and World War I veterans Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop, the Shrine is built in a classical style and is based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

Beneath the sanctuary lies a crypt, which contains a bronze statue of a soldier father and son representing two generations, as well as panels listing every unit of the Australian Imperial Force.

The paving is designed as a huge urban artwork, called Nearamnew, by Paul Carter and gently rises above street level, containing a number of textual pieces inlaid in its undulating surface.

Cathedral Arcade, in the Nicholas Building (1927), was built in the art deco style and reflects Melbourne's 1920s architecture with glass domes, leadlight, arches, and shopfronts with detailed wood paneling.

[286]Another venue that shaped Melbourne's early architectural form is the pub, a licensed drinking establishment traditionally built on corners within the inner-city and city centre, usually no more than two-storeys tall.

[287] In 1972, as a result of sustained pressure from the National Trust, Victorian Parliament amended the Town and Country Planning Act to include the "conservation and enhancement of buildings, works, objects and sites specified as being of architectural, historical or scientific interest".

In this context, as well as the many places demolished in the 1960s sometimes without a plan for a replacement, "developers white elephant schemes for central Melbourne proceeded virtually unchecked throughout the 70s", resulting in widespread loss of historic buildings.

Victorian era Rialto group of buildings contrasted with the 20th Century late modernist Rialto .
Illustration of Collins Street in 1839 overlooked by Wurundjeri from the hill on the approximate site of the Old Treasury .
St James Old Cathedral (1839-1847) (relocated 1914), the most prominent of the few remaining buildings from the colonial era.
Como House in South Yarra (built 1847 and extended in 1853), operated as a museum by the National Trust of Victoria, is the city's best preserved example of residential colonial architecture.
Duke of Wellington Hotel on Flinders Street. Dating to 1850 it is one of the city's oldest surviving commercial buildings.
HM Prison Pentridge built in 1851 to address the explosion of crime from the early gold rush, is one of the most distinctive and intact of Melbourne's large bluestone buildings.
The bluestone Royal Terrace (1853-1854) was the first large example of newly popularised terraced housing.
Joseph Reed's 1854 competition winning entry for the State Library of Victoria contributed to the strong academic classical theme in the city's early public buildings.
The 1854 Old Quad at the University of Melbourne , designed by English architect Francis Maloney White helped establish Melbourne's gothic revival beyond religious buildings.
William Wardell 's design for the massive bluestone gothic revival St Patrick's Cathedral , which would become Australia's tallest and largest, began to take shape in 1858
Old Treasury, designed by John James Clark in 1857 to hold the enormous amount of gold coming from regional Victoria, is considered to be Australia's finest Renaissance Revival building.
Num Pon Soon built in Chinatown in 1860 exemplifies the gold rush influence of the Chinese community
Details of St Michaels Church , Collins Street, 1866, the first example of elaborate polychrome brickwork in Australia, a design feature which proved immensely popular in Victorian era Melbourne
The Royal Exhibition Building (1879), a UNESCO World Heritage Site . [ 117 ]
St Paul's Cathedral designed by William Butterfield emerged as a major landmark of the city from 1880 even without its later redesigned spires
Ormond College by Joseph Reed completed 1881 was a major education landmark of the land boom era
The grand luxury 1884 Windsor Hotel on Spring Street is the most significant surviving example from Melbourne's popular temperance movement
Princess Theatre , the William Pitt 1886 designed theatre is the most significant of Melbourne's once thriving Victorian era scene
Melbourne Stock Exchange (1887) one of a number of tall elaborate commercial gothic revival buildings surviving near the intersection of Collins and Queen Street
In the 1880s, multi-storey warehouses proliferated in Flinders Lane , giving it a canyon-like appearance. Pictured: Leicester House, built in 1886.
Tram and Omnibus Building, Bourke Street. Completed in 1891
Grand Hotel, 67 Spencer Street, the former head offices of the Victorian Railways, completed in 1893
Block Arcade on Collins Street became the most fashionable of the city's many shopping precincts from 1891
Flinders Street station (1909)
Treasury Place
The art deco Manchester Unity Building (1927), flanked on the left by Albany Court (1936) and on the right, The Capitol (1924)
Aldersgate House (1923)
ICI House (1958) was the first building to break Melbourne's long standing height limit, becoming the tallest in Australia and ushering major changes to the city's skyline.
A 1970s mining and financial boom saw many taller buildings constructed in the modern style like 140 William Street (1972).
Collins Place twin towers by I. M. Pei were Melbourne's tallest from 1978 to 1986.
Roy Grounds ' State Theatre , along with other buildings of his 1960s vision for the Victorian Arts Centre, anticipated Melbourne's postmodern movement.
Nonda Katsalidis' Melbourne Terrace Apartments (1993) was credited with making apartment living in the CBD fashionable.
RMIT Building 8 's complex and fanciful design was seen as a turning point in Melbourne's strong postmodernist movement in 1993
ANZ's 1993 World Headquarters Tudor gothic inspired tower was designed to assimilate the cluster of 19th century gothic revival buildings below
The Atrium at Crown Melbourne , completed in 1997, is one of the building's many highly detailed interior features
Coop's Shot Tower (1889) retained within the conical glass roof of Kisho Kurokawa 's Melbourne Central shopping centre
Premier Tower , juxtaposed with the heritage-listed Mail Exchange Building (left)
Shrine of Remembrance in Kings Domain
Federation Square
The South Melbourne Town Hall (1879)
Royal Arcade (1870)
Bolte Bridge (1999)
Melbournia Terrace , Carlton, Victoria . Completed in 1877. Rows of terraces built between the 1870s and 1890s with Italianate parapets and iron lacework are typical of the housing built en-masse in the inner suburbs of Melbourne during the land boom
The Federal Coffee Palace in the 1890s. The grand hotel, built in the French Second Empire style, was demolished in 1974.
Town Hall Chambers on the corner of Little Collins and Swanston Street under demolition in 1968. Tivoli Court office tower is being erected in the background.