The Private Life of Public Architecture
A vision for contemporary architecture beyond the 15 minutes of fame
ISBN: 978-0-646-51377-5
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: 07/2009
Recommended Retail Price: $79.00
Number Of Pages: 216
Height By Width: 272 x 215
Contributors: Andrew Mackenzie, Donald Bates, Geoffrey London, Hamish Lyon, Nik Karalis
Photography: Peter Bennetts
Design: Round Studio
This book is not just about a building. It is about how major architecture gets commissioned, managed and built done in Australia today. In this case the major project is a billion dollar convention centre, one of the largest of its kind in the world, currently being built on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD. It is will be a city within a city… work, rest and play, all convened within an enormous campus of buildings. After years of research, overseas travel, design workshopping, financial horse-trading and urban planning, the two shortlisted teams delivered their finished proposals to the Premier’s office – three trucks of drawings, documents, models and collateral material. The project was finally awarded to the Plenary Group with NH Architecture and Woods Bagot as the architectural team. The newspapers lurched into gear and journalists launched their familiar rhetoric, of what has become a routine, if myopic, public-purse cost benefit analysis. But despite the glare of media attention, the process that lies behind big architecture is far from clear. This book explores this process – the private life of public architecture – through the building of the Melbourne Convention Centre; a building that not only challenges the conventions of public space, but also what architecture means in the contemporary city.
