May 2026

If you go to Dymocks in Collins Street, you should look up ! This rather speccy atrium /shopping centre was built as the Sportsgirl Centre, 1991.

I’d forgotten it was quite so fully richly Postmodern. Four levels of faintly classical ‘stone’ panels, deeply coved edges, curving travertine floors, clustered brass balustrades, interesting lights, boxed out shopfronts, all topped by a mirrored slanting skylight thing opening to the north. There used to be a sweeping stair going down too, with Op Art paving, now covered or gone. Theres a fun hydraulic lift (on a pole) that goes so slowly, ending in a Pomo rocket, but you can’t get up there anymore. This was the restaurant level, but it was never that popular – now it’s an empty looking hp computer ‘welcome centre’ by appointment. There’s only a few shops really, it was always a bit of a stretch to think it would be busy, you can walk through to Presgrave Place but it’s not well known or used. Sportsgirl lost money on it and sold in 1994, eventually leaving altogether a site they’d been in since at least the 50s.

It was designed by local architects Buchan, Laird and Bawdon, who I think did the pretty ordinary facade, which it’s clunky bay windows and tower thing. The mall interior is by US shopping centre specialist Anthony Belluschi, who was the son of famous US modernist Pietro Belluschi; I have the impression that US mall interiors and certainly office lobbies were sometimes fully kitted out like this, more so that here.

It unfortunately replaced a rather nice 1931 office building called Howey Court, which also had an arcade. It had a rather tall tower, and was a bit Gothic a bit Walter Burley Griffin style but was by Marcus Barlow, who designed the Manchester Unity built the next year.

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