19 December 2024

Latest super luxury apartment tower on St Kilda Road down the bottom end rather oddly bulges outwards from its base, which is also set a bit below street level.

It’s by @rothelowman and reminds me of a number of (unbuilt) projects by Zaha Hadid (last 3 pics); they’ve channeled her style before. Unlike those where what you see is the structure, this one just has applied strips, but it’s a nice enough effect. It’s a small site with one large flat / floor, and another selling point is that you put your car in a lift and have it sitting next to the lounge. 🤔 Saves on building basement parking, but they’ve got some of that too. It’s not quite finished; one of the tradies said ‘do you like it?’ I says ‘it’s ok’, and he just laughed. Oh, and it’s called Neue Grand 🙄

May 2026

Ok this new one on the corner of St Kilda and Toorak does look good in the winter sunshine, at least from the corner. It’s really just curved sheets of plain shiny glass with some flowing gold lines attached, something like I might doodle, but it does flow up nicely with some ripples, then thrusts out to the rounded tower-like corner. The gold lines a bit wonky though. The rest of it is a bit lacking though, it fills up the site as much as possible, and it’s all maybe too shiny. And it’s called Muse, which just makes me think I should be musing whether it’s good or not.

The architects are @brucehenderson, and it’s only for the wealthy, with 45 flats starting at $4mill, but you get to choose your finishes. It’s an acceptable replacement for the very dull office block there before, which itself replaced some nice c1920 flats called Rutland Lodge built in the garden of the Victorian mansion Chelmer on the block next door.

• Uncategorized