Site Visit #4: Federation Square, Melbourne

Federation Square, Melbourne (or Fed Sq). It comprises a series of buildings containing a public broadcaster, art galleries, a museum, cinemas, exhbition spaces, restaurants, bars and shops around two major public spaces; one covered (The Atrium), the other open to the sky, and composed of two spaces that flow into one another (St. Pauls' Court and The Square). The majority of the precinct is built on top of a concrete deck over busy railway lines.

Federation Square occupies roughly a whole urban block. The open public spaces are directly opposite Flinders Street Station and St Pauls' Cathedral. The layout of the precinct helps to connect the historical central district of the city with the Yarra River. The result of an international design competition, Federation Square was designed by Don Bates and Peter Davidson of Lab Architecture Studio.

Details:

Construction
The construction of the deck beneath the Square is understood to be the largest expanse of railway decking ever built in Australia. The deck is supported by over 3,000 tonnes of steel beams, 1.4 kilometres of concrete 'crash walls' and over 4,000 vibration-absorbing spring coils and rubber padding. The deck is designed to support some of the most sensitive uses imaginable - galleries, cinemas, and radio and television studios - and it needed to isolate them from vibration and noise.

The Facade
The building façade system, utilising new understandings of surface geometries, allows for the individual buildings of Federation Square to be differentiated from each other, whilst simultaneously maintaining an overall coherence.

Three cladding materials: sandstone, zinc (perforated and solid) and glass have been used, structured within a triangular pinwheel grid. This modular system uses five single triangles (all of the same size and proportion) to make up a self-similar triangular (but larger scale) "panel". Five panels (following the same geometrical logic) are joined together to create a larger scale, self-similar triangular "mega panel", which is then mounted on to the structural frame to form the visible façade.

Through the varying proportions of façade materials within this triangular grid and their combinations within a changing set of patterns or figurations, unique surface qualities have been developed not only for each building, but also for the different orientations of each façade.

The Square
The square was the civic and spatial component for Federation Square, establishing connections with the diverse context of the city and the surrounding urban and riverside landscape. The design allows for a vast array of uses, from the largest scale public gathering of up to 15,000 people to intimate areas for relaxation and thoroughfare.

To distinguish it from the city's existing pavement, the square was surfaced in hand-laid (approx. 500,000) cobblestones of variegated coloured Kimberley sandstone. The sandstone paving has been laid in a patterned design as one of the collaborative components of the public artwork programme. Paul Carter, writer and artist, linked this overall design to a separate artwork called nearamnew, set within the Square's surface. This work of sandblasted paving records and voices the site's history through the cultural encounters that have marked it as a site. Consisting of a series of overlapping stone tablets inlaid with layers of typographically scaled and interwoven texts, the artwork reflects different and often conflicting subjects and stories throughout the site's history.




Reference:
http://www.federationsquare.com.au/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_Square