One of my #leastfavouritebuildings, from most unflattering angle. The quite ridiculously skinny #PhoenixMelbourne apartments by @fenderkatsalidis on #FlindersStreet, with that crazy blue wiggle partly disguising a very sheer #concretewall (the wiggle is by graphic designer Garry Emery). When first proposed (at 40 storeys !) in the late 2000s I thought it would be financially unfeasible, but no ! Despite being the area of a small #terracehouse, 6.7m wide, and the rear half first 7 floors being #carstacker parking, with #monocoque engineering the top 20 floors of one 2 bed flat /floor with unbeatable views and location meant yes it was feasible ! (Lots seem to be for rent at like $900/week, one sold for $1.8mill in 2015).
It was completed in 2014, and it was this kind of thing that really shouldn’t have been possible (if anyone had taken any notice of the setback guidelines) that led to a rewriting and firming up of the rules in 2015, with tall blank side walls no longer allowed, no borrowed light bedrooms, and podium plus setback mandatory (you can see a token version here with little nods at the height of adjacent buildings). So it’s not that I hate it aesthetically – fortunately it doesn’t stick out too much- but what it represents, the maddest thing that got built in the 10 years of free-for-all planning, when the Melb CBD got a thicket of no setback pencil towers, undoing 20 years of careful urban design.
Storey of Melbourne 