A complex project, involving six separate head contracts, our commission included alterations to the Collins Street façade and the Russell Street porte cochere, reconfiguration of the retail court, a new entry to the Hyatt Hotel and connection to Beaney Lane. The 1980s Collins St façade is from a time of “uncertain architecture”, probably viewed at the time as a conservative post-modernism response under the client's instructions. Melbourne now asks more of a building that had turned its shopfronts away from the street leaving a bland and out-of-scale wall addressing Melbourne's most prestigious street. Collins Street between Exhibition and Russell Streets is a mix of 19th and 20th century buildings. At street level they reflect the vitality of business and retail communities with portals and richly-detailed display windows. Older buildings are characterised by symmetry, however the overriding influence is a rhythm of columns, windows and shopfronts. It is this that the new façade design references to make a new but considerate contribution. The two-storey portals of 101 and 109 Collins Street are referenced to compose a façade of two-storey high column intervals defining the shopfronts. Above the shopfronts a translucent skin of stainless steel mesh covers the existing. A flat projecting cornice at the general parapet level of the street completes the composition. Two-storey shopfronts hard on the street extend the street edge and the richness of colour, texture and activity of the adjoining buildings. Small projecting canopies register the

first storey allowing the second storey to present retail displays. The Russell Street porte cochere is transformed from an area of utility and an understated elevation to one of a prestigious public face and hotel entry. The encasement of the round columns, with limestone and metal cladding, in a blade-like geometry paradoxically gives them a more slender appearance and lends elegance to the façade. Together with the pair of Bruce Armstrong birds, the disobedient blade column, turned 90 degrees to the others, sets up the episode that marks the primacy of the entry and therefore the hierarchy of a civic façade. Looking to Melbourne's little thoroughfares of lanes and arcades as a finer weave of the city's fabric, Beaney Lane is given life as a pedestrian route through to Collins Street and an entry to the Spice Market Bar and MoMo restaurant on the lower ground, formerly the lower food court. To maximise perceived permeability and transparency we have retained the natural light to the non-conditioned court, drawn the street into the hotel and promoted cross traffic through to Russell Street. The processional approach to the Hotel entry has the proportion of an arcade and connects to Russell Street via an internal courtyard and Beaney Lane. The courtyard can be a pre-function space, spill over bar area and an adjunct foyer. Reinvigorated retail space provides enlarged frontage and volume, which has not compromised the Hotel's Collins St address. Function facilities are available by filling in atrium at Level 8 to create new function floor area.