James Milledge, Bates Smart; Charles Justin, SJB Architects and

Roger Nelson, NH Architecture are the Principals from the three

architectural firms involved in this vibrant interweaving of office

space, retail amenity and public domain.

Anna Johnson: I'd like to begin with a background to the project, and·

how the project came about.

James Milledge: The entire site was put together in the late 1980s by Lend

Lease. At that stage there was a Harry Seidler single tower design proposed

but, because the property industry collapsed at the end of the 198os, it was

never built. Lend Lease subsequently sold the site to a consortium that

consisted of David Marriner's Staged Developments and CBUS Property.

When Staged Developments and CBUS eventually split, this property -

consisting of William Street, Little Bourke Street, Ramsay Lane and Bourke

Street, with Goldsbrough Lane running through the centre- went to CBUS.

In 2001 Bates Smart was brought on board to propose a design for an office

building on half of the site bounded by William Street, Little Bourke Street,

Goldsbrough Lane and Bourke Street. The other half was left untouched. We

designed a building that's similar to the building you see now. It was then

marketed - unsuccessfully - to a number of large tenants over a period of

about 18 months. Various ideas for the site were considered and they finally

PAGE 44 • MONUMENT

decided any further proposal should engage the whole site, leaving our

proposed William Street building as it was, but looking at the entire site

holistically. A planning competition was run and SJB Architects, assisted by

NH Architecture won the competition. Our client then came back to us and

said, 'Well, how would you like to work with these guys?' We said, 'Of course,

we'd love to!' . We then put together a consortia to produce a proposal that

was pretty much in keeping with that winning design.

AJ: OK, so what were the characteristics of the winning NHA and

SJB design?

Charles Justin: Our design was not so much an architectural response, but

more a strategy of how to approach the site. The original brief included a

mixed-used development of an office building, a residential tower and

a hotel. As time went by, they decided against the hotel and so the project

developed into a twin office tower with a three-level retail base. We proposed

to combine the existing dispersed car parks, servicing and loading into

a single car park and associated services, which would liberate the ground

plane and allow for a high degree of activation on all street frontages; good

both for the overall urban design and in commercial terms . The other

strategy was to incorporate a strong food and beverage and retail component,

similar to Collins Place, which would plug into the corporate blocks and > >

01 The chevron profile of 550 Bourke Street

is clad in strips of black, reflective, fretted and

textured glass resembling a chandelier

02 A series of additional lanes and arcades

add to the permeability of this urban zone

COMMERCIAL COLLABORATION

"YOU HAD THREE ARCHITECTURAL FIRMS COMING TOGETHER AND BOUNCING IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES

0 F F EAcH 0 THE R ~, CHARLES JUSTIN, SJB ARCHITECTS

> > serve the precinct and local area. Then, as a tripartite group of architectural

companies, we started from scratch using that strategy as the base point.

Roger Nelson: A public arena had not really existed here; it had generally

been aggregations of blocks and expressions of corporate existence. So

there was enormous potential here to use the infrastructure of the city to

host a public realm and supporting activities, rather than having big mute

building blocks with the support facilities out the back. And, unlike Collins

Place, the project maintains all the through ways, all the ant tracks, and

in doing so activates all the edges. It is a more traditional Melbourne solution

in that it wasn't privatised or internalised; the public domain remained

public and was knitted back into the fabric of the city.

AJ: Can you talk about this idea of somehow extending the city into

the site, of engaging the context in the design?

CJ: One of the challenges was that we were dealing with such a large

site; how could we create that diversity of p~rsonas that makes up a city

block? It was important, for instance, to give the retail a different persona

than the corporate offices and yet not have one dominating the other.

RN: Often those two things are at odds. Melbourne has done OK, but in

other cities, like Pert?, there's a quest to humanise the corporate persona,

but the dominance of the corporate lobby and its determined sort of defence

means it is really hard to infiltrate. There is corporate character around these

main street addresses, but internally, off Goldsbrough Lane, the character is

more relaxed, informal, with a much bigger vibe.

The buildings fragment to the north and, as you walk along, it feels like the

grain of the little laneway streets of Melbourne. The idea was to break up the

retail into a series of modules, so that there are a series of smaller individual

buildings that are a subset of the larger complex, with each having their own

persona, and then referencing back to the different parts of the city.

Certainly another architectural or urban agenda was to establish

a relationship between our buildings and the context of the site.

Our sandstone building references the Supreme Court, while the other

corner office tower relates to 140 William Street, the old BHP tower, with

its cross bracing.

The bluestone building relates to other small pavilion-type buildings

around the city, like the Mitre Tavern and the Goldsbrough building. We

wanted a collective of buildings rather than one articulate architecture that

is followed through to the nth degree. »

MONUMENT • PAGE 4 7

, , . i • I I I

COMM ERC IAL COLLABORATION

----D 0 0

I

L

Site plan

"WITH GOOD DESIGN YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE THE COMMERCIAL PROCESS TO DELIVER STRONG

PUBLIC DOMAIN~' CHARLESJUSTIN, SJBARCHITECTS

» AJ: There is precedent for this type of collaborative project and it raises questions about the future of the city and the character of its

built fabric: . Will it be less of the sole practice being responsible for big signature building and more collaboration?

JM: I would say that any one of us could have put this together on our own,

and that would occur in most j~int venture cases. But a project like

this usually comes from the client's side. They identify a firm that has

produced something along the lines of what they are looking for, or they

like the way they put together office buildings, but they might also have

seen a retail project by NHA and then they like SJB's approach to master

planning and so they cherry pick from a number of firms . The secret of

making a joint venture work well is to put egos and other issues aside and

assemble a pool of people - your best - and create what is to all intents

and purposes a mini firm.

CJ: One of the interesting things about this project is that with good design

you can actually use the commercial process to deliver strong public domain.

There wasn't a cent of public money in this; it was driven by the

developer and ourselves. When you have the right considerations

and appropriate inputs there is no reason why you can't generate a great

public outcome and the city is the beneficiary.

AJ: What about the issue of design authorship, was that an issue?

CJ: Everyone likes to point at the project and say 'well, so and so did

that and so and so did this'. Authorship is important, but it is only part of

it .. . the authorship was strong here because the team was strong.

What I found great about this process was that you had three architectural

firms coming together and bouncing ideas and perspectives off each other.

Typically, you are under so much pressure trying to get the project resolved

that you don't always have the creative energy to consider all the various

layers of the design. Here we were designing from the inside out , from the

top down, designing in a very three-dimensional comprehensive way. The

creative oomph of the collaborative approach meant that we were able to

consider it in a creative way from day one. I think each of us would regard

this as one of our better works. M

b1 monumentmagazine.com.au/g4/cbw ~ See more on the facade, as we ll as additional plans.

MONUMENT • PAGE 49