Federation Square

Federation Square, boarded by the corners of Swanston and Flinders Streets and the Yarra River has had a incredibly varied history of use, particularly over the past 200 years.


The site was traditionally owned by the Wurundjeri aboriginal people.


In the 1800s the site housed the Coroner's Office, Registration Office and Morgue. The lithograph shows Melbourne in 1862, the morgue can be seen in the right-hand foreground, in front of St Paul's Cathedral.


The advancement of the railways saw the development of the Jolimont Rail Yard, in the late 1800s where trains were stored and repaired. Plans to improve and develop the site went through various phases from as early as the 1925 "Cathedral Square" proposal by James Smith selected by the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects.


The Gas and Fuel buildings, Princes Gate Towers, were built in the 1960s over part of the Jolimont Rail Yard in the minimalist "international style" of the time. They were demolished floor by floor in 1996 to make way for Federation Square.


Federation Square, as the site is currently known, was the result of an international design competition held in 1997 won by Don Bates and Peter Davidson of Lab Architecture Studio. It was opened on 26 October 2002 and cost $440 million to construct.

The location houses shops, bars, cafés and restaurants and a number of significant cultural facilities including the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.







Public spaces include the Attrium, that holds regular events such as the Fed Square Book Market, the giant fixed screen the broadcasting major sporting and other event and the BMW Edge Auditorium that hosts a mixture of free and festival events.



The main square is paved in 470,000 ochre-coloured sandstone blocks from Western Australia, designed as a huge urban artwork called 'Nearamnew', by Paul Carter.

Federation Square with its mixed use and distinctive design has become the State's second most popular tourist attraction.



References:
Brown-May, A. (2001) Federation Square... a place in history, Federation Square Management Pty Ltd

Brown-May, A. & Cooke, S. Death, Decency and the Dead-House: The City Morgue in Colonial Melbourne,