墨尔本的城市广场/Chapchinstudio事务所

发布于：2023-05-21 23:20:39

Melbourne city square

设计方：Chapchinstudio事务所

位置：澳大利亚墨尔本

分类：广场

内容：实景照片

图片来源：Dianna Snape

图片：5张

墨尔本市在二十世纪六十年代后决定开始兴建城市广场。曾经举办了以简洁为概念的城市广场竞赛，Regent地区的广场喷泉导致了周围商铺的不便而使该地区逐渐没落。如今市政府决定重建这一区域。在一些列基础设施建设和建筑改造的基础上，城市还建立了一个多层次的复合型的汽车公园。街道的转角也成为了非常受欢迎的公共聚集空间。这个场地的重新设计包括了由南到北的玻璃河，典雅的喷泉。花岗岩沙土的铺装为节假日的圣诞树种植和帐篷搭建提供了地方。最令人动容的一个改变是设计师为这里创造了港口树列，与墨尔本的塔楼相呼应。这两排行道树是墨尔本重建步行系统的第一步。

译者：Jevin

Melbourne’s City Square has been the sheet of yellow trace on which the city learned its civic design skills and developed its understanding of the relationship between its values and its built environment. This city was not designed to hold civic squares – the wide streets were seen as the public realm and, indeed, they served and still serve us well as that. But in the late 1960s the city fathers decided that Melbourne needed a square on the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets, opposite Joseph Reed’s Town Hall, on a site then occupied by an elegant block of retailers.

A brief was developed and it was here that the political-social climate first intersected with the architectural-social outcomes. It was the time of the protests against Australia’s involvement in the war in Vietnam and the protest marches along Swanston and up Collins Street to Parliament House put fear into the hearts of the good burghers writing the brief. The entire history of public squares as places where the public gathered was swept aside when it was decided that the square was to be broken up in such a way that it could not become a place where the public could gather in large numbers.

A competition was held and won by then recent architecture graduates John Denton, Bill Corker and Barrie Marshall. Their square was a beautifully detailed response to the brief. But the brief included a waterwall across the site as a centrepiece and a basement arcade of shops under Collins Street, which was famed for its street front shops. So those shops died and the basement was closed off, the waterwall became a graffiti wall and over the following decade the square became a no-go zone – along with its near neighbour, the decaying and unused but fondly remembered Regent Theatre.

And here again an intersection of values stamped their mark on the city and its square. A battle had raged for years over the future of the Regent, with the city council wanting it demolished and the population and the building unions wanting it restored and active. But here the intersection was an older Melbourne argument between heritage and development. While the words flew, both the square and the theatre decayed further.

Then a proposal emerged which was seen – depending on where one stood – as either a solution from the gods or a Faustian deal. A developer would buy the eastern half of the square from the city council for $12.5 million and build a hotel and apartments on it. The council would put that $12.5 million towards the restoration of the Regent along with $12.5 million offered by the state government. This would allow the restoration of the theatre and the construction of a hotel with apartments on the eastern half of the City Square. So the battle became the sale of public space to a private developer.

And that electrified the city. The city council and the developer won. The Regent was restored to its former magnificence, is thriving as a theatre and has contributed greatly to the life of the city. And the hotel and apartments were built on the eastern half of the square. (I have to admit here that I remain sulky about this hotel and apartment complex as it is a really shocking building, but the bureaucrats thought it fine, although its architectural failings were clear in the drawings and were to become even clearer on the project’s completion.)

While the city’s architects required the hotel to have activity fronting the square, it took some time for this to emerge. However, in the last few years it has happened and a lively row of shops and well-designed bars now edge the open space. Just don’t look up.As part of the deconstruction and remaking of the square, the city built a multi-level basement car park for 450 cars, which works well for both the hotel and city users. The car park’s impact on the City Square is only via a ventilation shaft on the corner of Flinders Lane and this has been designed as a very stylish component to hold that corner.Also on the Flinders Lane edge facing north sits Brunetti, one of Melbourne’s favourite coffee shops, which both contains this street edge and works as a popular meeting spot.

The redesign of the square included a stretched pond – the “glass river” – which runs from north to south. For the last few years this pond has stayed dry and covered due to the drought but it is about to be filled again now that we have rain.Along the Collins Street edge sits the very subtle and gorgeous fountain wall gifted to the city by the late John Mockridge, an important architect of post-World War II Melbourne.Most of the new surface is granitic sand, which offers an adaptable base for Christmas trees and tents and the various paraphernalia of contemporary events and festivals. There are also some areas of genuine grass where exhausted parents can sit and kids can play. Grass is a real joy in hard-paved cities.

One of the best moves for the City Square has been creating an arbour of plane trees along the Swanston Street edge, which are placed at six-metre intervals – to match the portico of the Melbourne Town Hall – rather than the twelve-metre intervals used throughout the city. This double line of planes on the widened footpath is the first part of the next stage of the revitalization of the square where the footpath will extend out into Swanston Street to meet the tram line. All traffic except trams will be halted and this may become the next test of Melbourne’s nerve in our tentative move toward a car-free future.It has been an interesting forty years for this land – Melbourne’s roll of yellow trace – and it’s looking pretty good.