Federation Square (also colloquially known as Fed Square) is a cultural precinct in the city of Melbourne, Australia. It comprises a series of buildings containing a public broadcaster, art galleries, a museum, cinemas, exhibition spaces, auditoria, 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. Paul's Court and The Square). The majority of the precinct is built on top of a concrete deck over busy railway lines between 2002 and 2004.
A major addition to the precinct in 2006 was Federation Wharf, which extended Federation Square to the Yarra by redeveloping the vaults under the Princes Bridge into cafes and ferry terminals with elevator access to Federation Square.
Skydeck.]]
Federation Square occupies roughly a whole urban block bounded by Swanston, Flinders, and Russell Streets and the Yarra River. The open public squares are directly opposite Flinders Street Station and St Paul's Cathedral. The layout of the precinct helps to connect the historical central district of the city with the Yarra River and a new park Birrarung Marr. This refocusing of the city on the Yarra River also partly reinforces links with the Southbank district, whose redevelopment has been ongoing as a key part of central Melbourne since the late 1980s.
The site of Federation Square has had a variety of former uses. The Gas and Fuel Buildings, Jolimont Yard and the Princes Bridge railway station were the immediate predecessors, though in the nineteenth century there was a morgue on the site. The result of an international design competition held in 1997 that received 177 entries, Federation Square was designed by Don Bates and Peter Davidson of Lab Architecture Studio.
building façade]]
A key part of the plaza design is its large, fixed public screen, which has been used to broadcast major sporting events, such as the AFL Grand Final, and still continues to do so. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, thousands of football fans braved cold nights to watch the matches on the Federation Square screen.
The complex of buildings forms a rough U-shape around the main open-air squares, oriented to the west. The eastern end of the square is formed by the glazed walls of The Atrium. While bluestone is used for the majority of the paving in the Atrium and St. Paul's Court, matching footpaths elsewhere in central Melbourne, the main square is paved in 470,000 ochre-coloured sandstone blocks from Western Australia and invokes images of the Outback. The paving is designed as a huge urban artwork called 'Nearamnew', by Paul Carter and gently rises above street level, containing a number of textual pieces inlaid in its undulating surface.
"The Atrium" is one of the major public spaces in the Federation Square cultural precinct in central Melbourne, Australia. It is a street-like space, five-stories high with glazed walls and roof. The exposed metal structure and glazing patterns follow the pinwheel tiling pattern used elsewhere in the precinct's building facades.
The "Labyrinth" is a passive cooling system sandwiched above the railway lines and below the middle of the square. The concrete structure consists of 1.2 km of interlocking, honeycombed walls. It covers 160 m2. The walls have a zig-zag profile to maximize their surface area, and are spaced 60 cm apart.
During summer nights, cold air is pumped in the combed space, cooling down the concrete, while heat absorbed during the day is pumped out. The following day, cold air is pumped from the Labyrinth out into the Atrium through floor vents. This process can keep the Atrium up to 12 °C cooler than outside. This is comparable to conventional air conditioning, but using one-tenth the energy and producing one-tenth the carbon dioxide.
During winter, the process is reversed, whereby warm daytime air stored in the Labyrinth overnight, to be pumped back into the Atrium during the day.
The system can also partly cool the ACMI building when the power is not required by the Atrium.
In addition to a number of shops, bars, cafés and restaurants, Federation Square's cultural facilities include:
The Ian Potter Centre houses the Australian part of the art collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), and is located at Federation Square (international works are displayed at the NGV International on St Kilda Rd). There are over 20,000 Australian artworks, including paintings, sculpture, photography, fashion and textiles, and the collection is the oldest and most well-known in the country.
Well-known works at the Ian Potter Centre include Frederick McCubbin's Pioneers (1904) and Tom Roberts' Shearing the Rams (1890). Also featured are works from Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Margaret Preston and Fred Williams. Indigenous art includes works by William Barak and Emily Kngwarreye.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image has two cinemas that are equipped to play every film, video and digital video format, with attention to high quality acoustics. The screen gallery, built along the entire length of what was previously a train station platform, is a subterranean gallery for experimentation with the moving image. Video art, installations, interactives, sound art and net art are all regularly exhibited in this space. Additional venues within ACMI allow computer-based public education, and other interactive presentations.
In 2003, ACMI commissioned SelectParks to produce an interactive game-based, site specific installation called AcmiPark. AcmiPark replicates and abstracts the real world architecture of Federation Square. It also houses highly innovative mechanisms for interactive, multi-player sound and musical composition.
Champions: Australian Racing Museum and Hall of Fame holds an array of Australian racing historical items. The Museum and Hall of Fame also has interactive displays, traveling exhibitions and memorabilia.
The National Design Centre showcases Australian design and includes a shop.
When the winning bid was announced in 1997, the design was a source of great controversy, being widely supported by the design community and causing outrage among heritage advocates. There was a change of government during its construction, and the incoming Labor administration ordered a significant design revision to appease conservative critics. The original design included several five-storey 'shards', two of which were free-standing on the north-western edge of the precinct. These two structures were intended to provide a framed view of St. Paul's Cathedral from the St. Paul's Court part of the new plaza. A report drawn up by Evan Walker proposed that the westernmost shard interfered with a so-called "heritage vista", a view of the cathedral from the middle of the tram tracks on Princes Bridge to the south.
For a while after its opening on 26 October 2002, Federation Square remained controversial among Melburnians due to its unpopular architecture, but also because of its cost – $440 million and entirely publicly funded – and for the delays in construction (as its name suggests, it was to have opened in time for the centenary of Australian Federation on 1 January 2001). The construction manager was Multiplex.
However, the negativity was short-lived[], with approximately 90% of people surveyed reported liking all, or at least parts, of Federation Square. Despite fears that the plaza would remain empty because of its location on the edge of Melbourne's centre, the open space has proved to be a remarkably popular place for protests, performances, cultural gatherings, celebrations and just 'hanging out'. Federation Square is Victoria’s second most popular tourist attraction, and was expected to attract between six and seven million visitors in 2003.
Federation Square won five awards in 2003 at the Victorian Architecture Awards, including the Victorian Architecture Medal.
The designers of Federation square did not get any work for 6 months after the completion of the A$450 million public space. Instead they received hate-mail. [1]
In 2009, it was voted as being the 5th ugliest building in the world by editors and members of the popular website Virtual Tourist. [2]