My Favourite Buildings #3
Previously: My Favourite Buildings #2.
It's been awhile but now that I'm in Melbourne, there's no better time to start again.
So this is Melbourne’s answer to Sydney’s Opera House? Interesting… Both aspire for greatness as major architectural works (and both compromised by bureaucracy) but the two are diametrically opposed as the cities themselves. The Opera House is a proud, confident and inspiring statement. Fed Square is a question, a challenge, a contradiction. 
One commands and directs to its visitors into its space while the other sits back and lets you explore its jumbled maze. One charges a fee while the other is mainly a free experience. A curious thought I had while wandering down Collins Street, checking out the natives, was that the buildings (in a very general way) reflected the way their respective cities dressed: Sydneysiders are ready to show off their sleek form and shape that they spent a lot of money to get, 
Melburnians layer contrasting patterns and somehow make it work. I don’t know how true that thought is though, it came to mind after walking past a particularly good-looking stylish local rugged up to brave the cold.
I found Fed Square to be quite a difficult photographic subject. It’s difficult to find a view of the building that is original and interesting; I constantly had that feeling that, despite the crazy shapes, the architects had pre-planned just about every view of the building and that to take a picture of it was to simply re-iterate the design without saying anything new about it. 
It is highly irregular but, viewing it from a distance the building does something that you wouldn’t expect it to do: it disappears. You’d think that it would clash with the urban background but it actually blends in somehow.
But I really do love the building. A couple of hours after I arrived here from Tullamarine (and after getting my compulsory soy latte from De Graves Espresso) I found myself wandering around the place, through the Alfred Deakin Building to check out the Screen Gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. There is a photographic exhibition there that looks interesting too (Bill Henson) and is certainly a reason to visit again in the future. I just wish I could take a decent picture of it.
Here's a criticism: considering it is partly a gallery, sometimes I find it dominates the art that it houses rather than simply presenting them. This happened to me last year, I can't remember which exhibition, maybe it was so shite I found myself preferring to look at the building itself rather than the art. Possible.
tags: Federation Square, Buildings.
