Melbourne Architecture

During my uni days in the 80s, Melbourne was architecturally quite plain vanilla. There were not many interesting modern structures to look at. Most buildings in the city were utilitarian office blocks built to maximize usable floor areas, and so looked like glass and metal boxes. Luckily, Melbourne has it's fair share of handsome Colonial era buildings to keep us inspired. 

In the last 15 years or so, Melborne has gone through an unprecendented building boom starting with the Crown Casino on the Southbank. Today, it can boast a collection of cutting edge buildings which are worth a visit for architecture tourists. A large part of this building boom was driven by demand for inner city apartments - both from Melbournians moving back to live in the city, and also from migrants and the large influx of overseas students.

The Melbourne CBD is quite compact and it is possible to walk through all the city streets in half a day. The rectangular grid regulates the street patterns and also largely determine the shape and scale of the buildings and developments.

Some of the new additions to Melbourne's skyline.

620 Collins Street. An apartment building at the corner of Collins and Spencer Street.

The Eureka Tower, the tallest building in Melbourne and 2nd tallest in Australia. 

An apartment building on Queen Street.

Freshwater Place on Southbank.

An interesting apartment block on Swanston Street, near Melbourne Uni. Many of the apartment blocks in Melbourne are built to cater to the student population.