Imagine seeing live music from the seats of a futuristic auditorium on the banks of Melbourne’s Yarra River as a live performance floats by.
Sounds pretty cool, no? The State Government certainly thought so, with the results of their $1 million design competition to remould Melbourne’s iconic Flinders Street Station – launched last month – landing in favour of submitted plans that included the live music amphitheatre proposal.
HASSELL + Herzog & De Meuron are the architectural team responsible for the winning design, which claimed top spot in the State Government competition for their Flinders Street vision that included the riverside auditorium, a marketplace, and an art gallery.
“We wanted to turn Flinders Street Station into a destination to be enjoyed, rather than a place to hurry through,” Hassell principal architect Mark Loughnan said of their winning design, which beat out five other shortlisted finalists in the competition and a 118 total entrants.
HASSELL + Herzog & De Meuron’s proposed makeover of the heritage site included a new precinct “encompassing St Kilda Road and Federation Square with the old Customs House and the Immigration Museum on Flinders Street,” which would inside feature a “major public art gallery, public plaza, amphitheatre, marketplace, and a permanent home for arts and cultural festival organisations.”
Mock-ups of the amphitheatre illustrate the potential live music possibilities of the outdoor venue in particular, showing a full riverside crowd watching a performance on a floating platform on the Yarra River.
Melbourne Premier Denis Napthine said that the judging panel had voted unanimously in favour of the Melbourne/Swiss architectural team’s vision as it “best reflects a future vision for this precinct.”
“The jury has praised the winning design for its respect for the heritage of the Administration Building while creating new and memorable additions to the station, such as the vaulted train hall, the new gallery and riverside amphitheatre,” Dr Napthine told the The Age.
Despite the encouraging win over the music-leaning Flinders St Station design, Premier Napthine won’t commit his government to actually building out the competition winning design, estimating its construction would cost up to $1.5 billion to realise the overhaul.
“Our commitment was to the design competition,” Dr Napthine previously told Herald Sun, whose government had shelled out around $1.6 million in taxpayer dollars to host the competition and associated publicly voted Peoples Choice Award, which was won by a trio of Melbourne University students for their design of a rooftop garden that stretched across the station.
Rather than using the competition winning designs as blueprints, Premier Napthine says that the public feedback and designs will be used to ‘inform’ future redevelopment of Flinders St Station.
“This is not for nothing, this is an important phase of the redevelopment of this iconic site,” he said. “There is no doubt that Flinders St needs redevelopment, needs refurbishment. We need to be guided as to the best way to get the best outcome, for Melbourne and Victoria.”
Major Projects Minister David Hodgett defended the People’s Choice Award as “more than a beauty contest,” saying that the gathered votes provided “genuine feedback… [which] will be used to develop and refine future plans for the station.”
