Architecture of Melbourne

The architecture of Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria and second most populous city in Australia, is characterised by a wide variety of styles in various structures dating from the early years of European settlement to the present day. The city is particularly noted for its mix of Victorian architecture and contemporary buildings, with 74 skyscrapers (buildings 150 metres or taller) in the city centre, the most of any city in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the wake of the 1850s Victoria gold rush, Melbourne entered a lengthy boom period. By the 1880s, it had become one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the British Empire, second only to London. This is embodied by the Royal Exhibition Building, Australia's first UNESCO World Heritage registered building. George Augustus Sala, visiting in 1885, coined the phrase "Marvellous Melbourne" to describe the wealth and grandeur he observed, a moniker which has stuck to this day. The city experienced an extraordinary real-estate bubble and which began around 1880, peaked around 1890 and collapsed by 1892. The legacy of this Land Boom era is a large amount of ornate High Victorian buildings in teh city centre known collectively as Boom style architecture buildings, including some of the finest examples of commercial High Victorian Gothic. The boom changed Melbourne's skyline, becoming an early skyscraper city and the first in the southern hemisphere with the tallest being the 12-storey APA Building (demolished 1980). Architectural historian Miles Lewis describes Melbourne of the period as a "Queen Anne Chicago". Along with commercial, civic, religious and institutional buildings, the boom gave rise to many large luxury hotels in teh central city, the largest being the Federal Coffee Palace (demolished in 1973). During this time a booming tramway and train network allowed the city to develop extensive suburbs, peppered with mansions, and villas, large and small, each trimmed with iron lace verandahs, and each suburb with a set of shops clustering around the railway station or along the tram lines, leaving a substantial architectural legacy.

Melbourne's growth returned by 1900, and continued at a more modest pace in the following decades. The Federation period of 1900-1915 saw a new crop of commercial buildings the central city; concerns about the likely congestion caused by skyscraper development and the influence of the City Beautiful movement saw a 132 feet (40 metres) height limit introduced in 1916 (which still allowed for ornamental towers). Suburban development of detached houses continued, in the new red brick Federation style. After the restrictions of WW1, development again resumed, with American influences now evidenct, such as Stripped Classical office buildings, and Californian Bungalow houses. After the interruption of the Great Depression, development again resumed about 1933, with central city commercial buildings now in the Art Deco style, and suburban development in a range of revivals, such as Spanish Mission or Old English. The development of low-rise flats in inner and middle suburban areas, which began just before WW1, continued in the 1920s in various revival styles, and increased markedly in the 1930s, usually in Art Deco style, a small boom which was abruptly terminated by WW2 in 1940.

The post World War 2 period ushered in a new boom, with the city hosting the 1956 Summer Olympics, and the lifting of height limits at the same time led to a boom in high rise office building, beginning with ICI House, completed in 1958. This boom, which lasted up to the early 1990s recession in Australia (some of the larger buildings remained under construction beyond this time) saw Melbourne maintain its tallest building title through much of the 20th century. However it also resulted in the loss of many of the city's most remarkable buildings to be replaced by modernist structures, mostly in the International Style. Concern at the losses led to the establishment of the Victorian Heritage Register in 1974, and the heritage list now includes such notable landmarks as the Royal Exhibition Building, Flinders Street railway station, St Paul's Cathedral, the General Post Office, State Library of Victoria, Shrine of Remembrance, National Gallery of Victoria and the Victorian Arts Centre.

Since the 2000s, the central city and neighbouring Southbank and Melbourne Docklands urban renewal areas have been the subject of a residential revival which has seen a new boom in high rise construction. Some blocks of the city are now developed to very high densities, and include the tallest buildings in Australia, including the 297m (92 floors) Eureka Tower, which was the tallest residential tower in the world when completed in 2006, and its spiritual successor Australia 108. The city has also added some notable architectural landmarks including Southern Cross Station and Federation Square.

Distinctively Melbourne styles include the many bluestone (basalt) constructions of the early colonial and gold rush era, extensive use of polychrome brickwork and a regional variation of the boom-style Victorian Italianate filigree (decorative cast iron) terrace houses featuring excessively high and ornamented parapets from the High Victorian period and a residential style pioneered by Robin Boyd and Roy Grounds known as the post-war Melbourne regional style. These attributes are rare elsewhere.