Who owns the city? The battle for design in hyper dense Melbourne

Central Melbourne has experienced an unprecedented building boom, doubling its number of tall buildings in half a generation. There is much speculation on who has been responsible for the quantity and quality of recent development in the city. Within this pressure cooker of development, what role do designers play? Who is balancing the public interest with commercial imperatives? What political and economic forces are reshaping the physical form so significantly in our city?

Architours Co-Director Andy Fergus and former City of Melbourne Senior Architect of 13 years David Pryor take a guided tour of the city they live and breathe, surveying the contribution of our recent batch of hyper dense developments to the public realm.

The tour is focused around the Central Melbourne Design Guide; a new set of design guidelines which recalibrates the focus of development back to the human scale. The tour commences at RMIT Design Hub after the Taishin Shiozaki Laboratory talk and ends at the Capitol Theatre.

Suggested reading prior to the tour:

1. https://theconversation.com/taming-wild-cities-the-tall-buildings-of-australia-show-why-we-need-strong-design-guidelines-116735
2. https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/amendmentc308

Melbourne Architours is running this very special tour for Open House Melbourne 2019.  

Photo: courtesy Melbourne Architours