2 February 2025
The RMIT Green Brain that I photographed in 2013; I quite like it, sort of like a huge sculpture that sits on top of the building, though normally I’d say no additions or keep them low and simple. Could do without the green cloud verandah though. It was designed by @armarchitecture, completed in 2010, and it’s an extension of ideas from their Storey Hall additions next door from 1995, where the facade used Penrose tiles (two shapes that fit together in an infinite variety of ways), but here they’re 3D and smoothed out – I think basically so it could look a bit like a brain, which I only just now realise is something University’s shape, ha ! It’s also the green from the hall, representing its Irish and feminist histories. The Edwardian factory it’s on is often said to have been built for the Singer Sewing Machine Co, but as far as I can tell they weren’t here till the 1950s; it was actually built for Welch Margetson, a British shirt making company, so there were sewing machines in it I guess, and clearly one of the many industries that employed mainly women. The architect was Leonard J Flannagan, better known those big arched tram depots in the eastern burbs from around the same time. It’s now one of the few reminders that this end of Swanston Street was once largely industrial / warehouse buildings. Though not outstanding architecturally, other similar places got heritage listed in the last review – but rather oddly not this one, not even in the list of rejected. Inside pic ARM, 1984 pic city of Melb libraries, clippings The Leader, 20 Dec 1913.
Storey of Melbourne 