Melbourne Central Shopping Centre

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Melbourne Central shot tower, underneath the iconic glass cone

Main entrance podium, corner La Trobe and Swanston Streets after re-development.

The central business district of Melbourne,showing the Batman building. Melbourne Central is visible as the triangular structure in the middle-ground

Melbourne Central is a large shopping, office, and public transport hub in the city of Melbourne, Australia. The complex includes the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre which was thoroughly refurbished in 2005; the Melbourne Central railway station (a part of the City Loop underground railway and formerly called Museum); and the 211 m high office tower with its distinctive black colour and two communications masts. Hoyts Cinemas opened a luxurious state of the art cinema complex in 2005 at the upper levels of the retailing space formerly occupied by the Japanese department store, Daimaru, and Hoyts is joined by an array of bars, nightclubs and shopping facilities which equally rival and exceed the range which might be found in a typical suburban shopping mall. There is a footbridge across Lonsdale Street to the adjacent Myer department store.

Contained underneath the shopping centre's massive glass cone sits the Coop's Shot Tower which was built on the site between 1889 and 1890. It ceased to be used in 1960. The tower was retained to become a focal-point of the centre.

The original design of the shopping centre, office tower, and railway station was by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. The shopping centre's original primary tenant was the first Australian branch of the Daimaru department store, which closed in 2003 after a decade of unprofitable operation. Daimaru also briefly had an operation on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which also closed.

The renovated centre, with a postmodern design, by architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall, aimed to open the complex to more natural light, new street-front shopping strips, and bubble-like additions to the footbridge across Little Lonsdale Street, but largely compromised the geometrical modern themed design of Kurokawa.

[edit] See also

• Tall buildings in Melbourne

[edit] External link

• Shopping complex official website