Arts Centre Melbourne
Roy Grounds · Melbourne, Australia · 1984
Arts Centre Melbourne is a large performing-arts complex whose theatres are mostly embedded below ground while a tall lattice spire marks the institution in the skyline. Roy Grounds’s design forms part of Melbourne’s larger arts precinct and uses a sequence of foyers, performance halls and plazas to connect St Kilda Road with the Yarra-side cultural district. The complex was realized over an extended period and reached its recognizable completed form in the 1980s. Its combination of subterranean program and highly visible urban marker makes it a distinctive late-modern civic project.