9 September 2017:
The Atrium, the best bit of #FedSquare by far. Such a mad #fractal spiderweb. An early example of computer aided engineering, creating an irregular space frame. But there’s rarely anything much in there (except the book fair) nor does it go through to anywhere in particular.
2021: just after I took this photo the Sunday second hand book fair was given one weeks notice to close; they only paid $30 each, so it was a sort of a public service thing, and fed sq said they wanted more flexibility, but at least it got people in there.
Something I wrote in 2018 ago during the successful @ourfedsquare campaign to get #fedsquare on the #heritageregister:
I think the paving at Fed Square is very attractive, though it’s been criticised as not only anti skateboards but bad for the less abled. I had some idea it was an artwork, and this is what I found :
“The pink and beige sandstone, all from the Kimberley, is called “Nearamnew”, designed by Melbourne academic and author Paul Carter in collaboration with Lab architecture studio. The title, like the artwork, is an amalgam of meanings and layers, representing the many histories and peoples that go together to make the Federation of Australia. ‘Nearamnew’ was what some colonists thought the local Woiwurrung called this location, but can also be read as the english words near-am-new; the overall pattern is a huge whorl, that might be an eddy of the once swampy Yarra, or a giant fingerprint. There are 9 ‘ground figures/vision texts’, patches of carved letters, scattered across the plaza, each a literal and metaphorical layering of meaning, combining letters of the overall name, and fragments of historical and contemporary texts, not meant to be read, but as a ‘creative catalyst of movement’, ‘walking in the footsteps of the many who have gone before, retracing the many discourses that have tracked through, over and under this site.” So, multiple meanings, or just walking on history, not sure.
The proposed Apple store will involve new areas of paving, but we havnt heard any mention of how this might affect the artwork, nor has
Paul Carter been consulted. The large landscape/urban design firm Oculus has been named as the landscape design partner with Norman Foster.
4 May 2018
Whether you like the outside or not, you gotta admit the angular lines of the interior of the #NGVA are impressive, or at least photogenic (actually sometimes a bit confusing to find your way around). #LABstudio, won competition July 1997, final design a year later after the brief changed to incl the gallery part, completed 2002.
3 June 2025
The eastern ‘shard’ at Federation Square, completed 2002, pics from 2017 and 2018. It’s a perfect evocation of ‘deconstructivism’, all wild angles, probably derived from complicated geometries of the site and sight lines. I like it! Though there’s nothing in it. This is the bit that’s most similar to the 1999 Berlin Jewish Museum. The unbuilt shard would have had more glass, I found some renders on my computer, don’t know the source, but must be much later than the 1996 design by @labarchitects. I’m not sure I wanted to see it built, it would have been a bit shouty, but the one level version built wasn’t great, and the replacement metro entry is just a glass box with a flattish roof, neither minimalist nor deconstructivist.
Storey of Melbourne 