John Batman would shift in his grave if he was still buried under the Queen Victoria Market.Batman, a murderous colonist, was laid to rest in 1839 on the site then known as Burial Hill, which became the Old Melbourne cemetery, and later the market in the 1860s, and was officially declared open in 1878. Now there are big plans to rebuild Queen Vic.
Those legacies should not be compromised, but they could be damaged if bad decisions are made now for the future of the market.The development strategy will build a mix of housing and offices on the southern boundary of the market and repurpose the existing ground level carpark as a plaza. But the proposed architecture of the towers is banal, International Style Modern. What the Dutch call krappe. For the inexpert among us, and non-Dutch, it has a facade overlooking the market, which is designed like an accountant’s spreadsheet, with cubic glass windows contained within a regulated Excel spreadsheet of vertical columns and lines of horizontal slabs. Maybe it was produced by an AI robot.
The new buildings fit over their site like a glove and contain ubiquitous car parking levels, like any mid-century urban building from the 1900s. As part of the development, the existing ground level car park will be recycled as a public square and a new carpark for 220 cars constructed underground. The state government has insisted that the existing 720 car parking spots available are returned in the new development, so the balance of 500 are located in the adjacent Munro site in Therry Street.
Those two elements of an urban project are these days considered worldwide to be redundant strategies and obsolete ideas for a contemporary city. Mostly, good designers look for an expansive role for their buildings, where profits are shared with citizens and the blight of automobiles is relegated to the past.