Metro Rail Trouble

Floyd James Billows

Supervisor: A/Prof. Graham Crist

Grattan street is currently in the process of being torn up to facilitate the construction of the new Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel works, to be completed in 2025.

The closure of this street has provided a rare opportunity to depict an alternative identity for the Melbourne University’s interface with Grattan Street, and the city.

This proposition aims to utilise the timing of these works, to recast Grattan Street as one of the world’s great university streets. The design process interrogates, critiques and acts upon the effectiveness of a street to exist across multiple active planes, providing three streets, in the place of one.

It expands by splitting Grattan Street between the Subterranean, Natural Ground, and the Elevated Street, as opposition to site infill.

Subsequently, this project also undertakes studies of boundary condition to closely knit the existing buildings to a new Student Union precinct, restitching the fabric of the existing campus.

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