Loved, hated, soon to be updated: The next chapter for Federation Square

Donald Bates is intrigued about what’s inside the construction shed on the north-west corner of Federation Square. It’s here an entrance to the Town Hall train station will be revealed in 2025 in a new chapter for one of the most controversial projects in Melbourne’s long history of controversial projects.

Bates has more reason than most to be curious. He was one of the lead architects of the square, which was initially so polarising that he and his design partner, Peter Davidson, received hate mail.

Seventeen years after its opening, Fed Square, as it is affectionately known, was deemed of such historical, aesthetic, technological and social significance, it was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, becoming the youngest building project in Australia to ever be recognised in this way.

While the Metro Tunnel station entrance will inevitably be contentious when revealed, Bates believes more people spilling into the square from the trains will be fantastic.

“The Federation Square design was never like ‘this angle has to be 34 degrees’, or ‘this is in alignment with the moon’. There is no sacred geometry. So if something needs to change, that’s possible.”

For some, the square gave Melbourne its missing civic heart and a landmark to rival the Sydney Opera House. Others say it has conflicting civic and commercial imperatives and design flaws, and that it turns its back on the Yarra River.

Twenty-one years after it opened, the square remains something of an enigma; its core role elusive, its place in the culture and working of the city unclear. Is it our city square, our landmark, our link connecting the CBD to the Yarra and beyond? Or is Fed Square a work unfinished?

In a three-part series, The Age is exploring Melbourne’s controversial quest for a monument of its own, the future of the square and the thwarted civic dream of building a deck over the Jolimont rail yards.

Search for a square

As early as 1850, Melburnians bemoaned the lack of a civic space in surveyor Robert Hoddle’s plan for the CBD, the Hoddle Grid.

Historian Graeme Davison says residents longed for “a place to hang out and be together … where citizens could assemble to celebrate, demonstrate and protest” – Melbourne’s agora or forum.

Through the decades, grand schemes were proposed, spruiked and shelved. When we finally got a civic space in 1980, it was the doomed City Square with its infamous yellow sculpture, The Vault, on the Swanston and Collins Street corner.

It was a confused space made all the more so by a brief from the conservative city council to architects Denton Corker Marshall to restrict the public area in size to discourage anti-war demonstrations. In the early 1990s the public space was further crunched to make way for the Westin Hotel.

Melbourne was again without a major civic plaza.

In 1996, as part of his campaign to revitalise a struggling CBD, then-premier Jeff Kennett announced the city was to get a new public square in time for the centenary of Federation.

Kennett says the inspiration for Federation Square flowed from the decision to demolish the “eyesore” Gas and Fuel towers built over part of the rail yards in the 1960s, and the growing recognition that the existing City Square was not working.

When Federation Square finally opened in October 2002 — the centenary deadline was missed — it was as if the city had finally found its landmark.

“This space will change the face of Melbourne forever, making us truly a riverside city,” boasted then-premier Steve Bracks.

It had been a difficult gestation marred by cost overruns, opening delays and a public row over the height of a narrow shard-shaped building that detractors said blocked views of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The design sparked heated debate when it was unveiled in 1997 after an international architecture competition. Its deconstructivist buildings, cranked angular geometries, scattered vertical shards and paving polarised the public.

Sociologist John Carroll ridiculed it as “a mixture of Le Corbusier on a bad day and deflated German expressionism … neither pleasing to the eye nor striking”.

John Brumby, then Labor opposition leader, said it had all the charm and appeal of Godzilla.

“It looked,” scoffed Barry Humphries,“like someone left a random pile of luggage in the square which got run over”.

Kennett made no secret of his displeasure. “Yes, I was surprised, to put it nicely,” he recalls.

Others loved it: “I think it’s a complete expression of everything Melbourne has become,” enthused singer Mike Brady.

Former VicHealth chief Rob Moodie found it “quite staggering”. “I’m inspired by it,” he said.

Architect Norman Day predicted it would become an icon, “but not like the Sydney Opera House, because Melbourne is composed like a tapestry, with new architectural threads woven into its fabric”.

Hordes visited to check out the crazy architecture, galleries and restaurants, and to attend lively debates in the public lecture theatre.

In February 2003, the square came of age as a civic plaza when it was the final destination for 100,000 Melburnians who gathered for the city’s largest ever peace march, to protest against Australia’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

It was the kind of public space Melbourne needed, says University of Melbourne architecture professor Philip Goad. “There should be places for public speaking about big issues.”

As a venue for major events, the square was, and remains, popular.

Diwali was the first of many cultural festivals, people gathered to watch Kevin Rudd’s national apology to the stolen generations on the big screen, Oprah told an adoring crowd that “everyone is so darn nice”, Queen Elizabeth crossed the square on a red carpet, 250,000 handwoven poppies covered the site to honour fallen Anzac soldiers, soccer fans cheered on the Matildas, and 10,000 people played the kazoo in a world record-breaking event during this year’s Rising festival.

Cracks emerge

But as the novelty wore off the square, weaknesses became apparent.

Peter Seamer, the square’s chief executive from 2000 to 2005, says it has been “a bit unloved” by the government and city council for some time. “It reeks of lack of passion.”

One of the problems has been the tension between the square’s commercial and cultural functions.

Reflecting 1990s economic thinking, Kennett had insisted it pay its own way, a condition not applied to older public spaces such as the Botanic Gardens.

The square’s charter says it must operate in the public interest and be financially sustainable. Yet, while it raises revenue from rents, car parking and charges for commercial events, it has reported successive losses.

The requirement to make money fuelled concern that culture was playing second fiddle to commercialism: the Crown Bet promotion in 2018, the Bunnings “click and collect” launch, and the Uniqlo pop-up store in 2019 cited as examples.

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Several restaurants have tried and failed. When Karen Martini’s hatted Hero opened at ACMI on Federation Square in 2021, it was lauded as the kind of eatery the sluggish post-lockdown city needed.

This month it closed after accruing substantial debt.

Hero co-owner Michael Gebran believes the square is not seen as a dining destination, despite excellent restaurants including Chocolate Buddha, Transport and Big Esso by Mabu Mabu.

“There seems to be some sort of vortex from a culinary point of view, where people don’t cross Flinders Street.”

Apple furore

Concern over the square’s declining fortunes led to the government’s plan in 2017 to replace its Yarra Building with an Apple store, disparaged by some as a “Pizza Hut pagoda”.

Some saw the ensuing dispute as a fight over the privatisation of public space and for Melbourne’s civic soul.

“The big concern was that we would end up with Apple wearing Federation Square like a hat,” says architect Michael Smith, a leader of the Our City, Our Square campaign.

In response, the National Trust nominated the square to the Victorian Heritage Register. Apple shelved its plans after Heritage Victoria refused to allow it to demolish the Yarra Building.

The quashed Apple store left the square at a crossroads. In 2019, amid concern it was withering away, the government ordered a review.

“If you go there pretty much any time outside of maybe a weekend event, it’s pretty sad,” former planning minister Richard Wynne observed at the time. And that was before COVID struck.

The review found the community wanted the square reasserted as Melbourne’s civic and cultural centre. It acknowledged concern about over-commercialisation and said the eateries should better reflect the state’s “amazing food” and cultural diversity.

In 2021 the government announced the square would be revitalised as part of an expanded arts precinct that includes the National Gallery of Victoria, Arts Centre Melbourne and the new NGV Contemporary.

Federation Square Pty Ltd was dissolved and the square and other arts institutions are now managed by the Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation.

Chief executive Katrina Sedgwick wants the community to feel it owns the square. She wants to support multicultural communities to hold flag-raising ceremonies and attract more festivals including the African Music and Cultural Festival, Korean Festival and Diwali, and arts festivals such as Fringe, Rising, Yirramboi and Midsumma.

She would like to see fewer commercial pop-ups, which she says clutter the square and distract from an “amazing architectural precinct”.

Seamer believes Apple would have been a much-needed drawcard.

“The square needs activity and it doesn’t get enough activity from some of the uses there now.”

Annual attendance at the square — which peaked in 2012-13 at 10.4 million – dropped to under 4 million during the pandemic. In 2022-23 foot traffic increased to 7.9 million visitors, still substantially below pre-COVID numbers.

Sedgwick is focused on finding tenants for vacant shops and offering a broader range of food. She says the new NGV cafe, which offers cheaper lunchtime fare, has already proved a hit with families.

Despite a problem during one of the broadcasts of this year’s Matildas FIFA Women’s World Cup games, when unruly fans stormed barriers and threw flares, Sedgwick is clear that the square will continue screening big sporting events, albeit with higher fences and security in some cases.

She wants the square to be a vibrant meeting place where friends get together to look at art and explore culture. “You go to talks or concerts or films or exhibitions, you have a snack, you meet, and you go shopping. You pop in and have a beer before you go to the MCG. It’s already used like that. But I’d like that to be amplified.”

Design flaws

Two decades on, the square’s design is no longer so divisive.

“Most Melburnians now love it. They come here to see the fireworks and the footy,” says Norman Day. “And then they fought for it when Apple tried to insert that glass box in it. It’s typical of Melburnians – they didn’t like it initially, and then they say, ‘Don’t you touch it, it’s ours.’ ”

Kennett is among them. “I love Federation Square now,” he says, highlighting in particular the paving that changes colour with the weather.

Carroll, the sociologist who described Fed Square as “a mix of Le Corbusier on a bad day and deflated German expressionism”, concedes: “I’ve mellowed in my attitude to Fed Square, as it seems to have worked as a social space.”

But big challenges remain.

To begin with, says the University of Melbourne’s Philip Goad, the architects seemed oblivious to the city’s weather. He points to the lack of shade. “It can be a sun scoop in summer and then a breezeway in winter because it faces south-west, where all our weather comes from.”

The cobblestone paving is also problematic for some. The idea was to prevent the square becoming a skate park, but the uneven surface is the bane of the mobility impaired.

The square’s slope has limited the kind of al fresco dining so common in European public squares, such as Piazza San Marco in Venice.

“The undulating landscape is a fundamental problem,” says Goad. “It’s part of this artistic moment that is Fed Square, that actually bedevils simple, ordinary urban existence.”

An important element in the design is its referencing of the Hoddle Grid’s celebrated laneways just across Flinders Street.

Tania Davidge, an architect and a leader of the Our City, Our Square campaign, says that, like the laneways, there is adventure in moving through the square, not always sure about where you might end up, as the architects intended.

“It’s a celebration, in its own funny way, of the laneways and the idiosyncrasies of Melbourne.”

Goad disagrees: “It hasn’t been able to fully capitalise on the laneways idea. It doesn’t have that close intimacy of the laneways that were its inspiration.”

Location, location, location

Some of the square’s challenges are due to its location and lack of connection to the Hoddle Grid to the north and the Yarra River to the south.

Donald Bates, one of the lead architects, says the original design did propose a pedestrian link and connection from the plaza through the bluestone vaults to the riverside. These were omitted due to budget constraints.

If Bates had his time again, he would animate the riverside and the back of the car park with cafes and restaurants.

Kennett agrees. “It’s a pity it didn’t open it up to the river.”

A long-understood foundation of public squares in Europe is the presence of the ‘three Cs’ – the civic (a parliament or town hall), the church and the commercial (a market, cafes).

Federation Square has always suffered from the lack of first two pillars as its location is removed from the CBD and its institutions.

Many of the world’s great squares are in the heart of their cities, and are often thoroughfares, like Piazza Navona in Rome and Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Fed Square is a thoroughfare to nowhere in particular.

To date, little has happened to address the poor connection to the river and beyond. Exactly how the square is to better connect to the arts precinct, as part of the 2021 strategy, remains unclear.

Historian Graeme Davison says the square works well when people come together to watch an event on the big screen, “when Melburnians become spectators as well as celebrants of some great occasion occurring elsewhere”.

He suggests it could be an appropriate space for a global digital society.

“For me, though, a square must still have some of the historical qualities that we associated with the Greek polis – a place where citizens come together physically, speaking and acting in full view of each other.”

Davison notes that demonstrators often prefer tighter spaces such as the forecourt of the State Library, where the pro-Palestinian rally was held earlier this month, or opposite Parliament House, “either because you can create an impression of crowdedness for the TV cameras, or because the political symbolism is stronger”.

Goad also observes many use the State Library forecourt, a central and better-protected space with a great civic institution as its backdrop, as a de facto city square.

Monument or moment?

Is Federation Square the landmark Melbourne never had?

Despite the early hype, Melburnians don’t seem to regard it as such. Nor, these days, do they seem troubled by the lack of a landmark.

Goad says the square’s design ethos was not about creating “Trafalgar Square with a hero monument”.

“Your readers may not want to read this, but Fed Square is this deconstruction moment. It’s meant to be about informal interaction, and to be porous. So in many respects, it’s a monument to a moment of the anti-monumental in urban design.”

Bates says the square was meant to be fluid so it could change with the times. He was torn, therefore, about its heritage listing.

“On the one hand, I was like, shit, we’ve just done the only building we’ve ever done in Australia, and it’s already on the heritage list after just 17 years. But it really bothered me that the heritage listing basically puts the building in aspic and says you can’t change anything without asking the heritage people, when our design was partly built on the premise that change is OK.”

An avid fan, Davidge nonetheless agrees the square has to be allowed to evolve. “It has needed that since it started because, as a new type of contemporary public space, it doesn’t have the three pillars of a European square anchoring it.”

Is the square Melbourne’s missing link, connecting the CBD to those much loved and used spaces to the east and south-east, like the MCG and sports precinct? A link that would make the square a through as well as to place?

Take a train into Flinders Street from Richmond or Jolimont and look up.

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The square ends with a jolt, its lifeless car park backing onto the vast Jolimont rail yards, where for a century governments have promised to build a grand civic corridor reconnecting the CBD to the city’s south and east, a project often referred to as Federation Square East.

Kennett stresses that Fed Square was always intended as the first part of “a rolling process” of building over the rail yards.

Such a connection could help provide the missing link.

Federation Square is a work in progress.

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