19 December 2024

I do love a bit of 80s mirror glass, don’t ask me why, used to hate them. This one on St Kilda Road just up from the junction has seen better days, a bit streaked and looks abandoned. It’s got a large overgrown garden obscuring the zig zag inset ground level, and it’s fully mirrored on three sides, including the carpark, where it reflects a Victorian house (and me). A six storey apartment project was approved in 2017, but the office was up for lease early this year; no one in it now though. It must have been built early 80s because I had an almost boyfriend who lived nearby in the mid 80s who said he checked out his look in the building on the way to work, and sometimes turned around, went home and got changed. Frameless mirror glass was first used for office buildings in the US from 1969, but the little square corner fixing idea here I think comes from Norman Foster’s dark glass Willis Faber in Ipswich, England, 1975. Update : I’m told when it was built part of the ground floor was a Westpac branch, with a drive – through on the north side. Hmm that was back when you had to fill in slips, how did that even work ?

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