Lewis Brownlie, A Melbourne that Might Have Been, 2016, Future Melbourne, A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne, Clare Williamson
Summary
Commissioned for the City Gallery's exhibition, History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne exhibition, this pen-and-ink wall drawing presents
a composite of unbuilt ideas for Melbourne. Its focus is the east side of Swanston Street, from La Trobe Street down to what is now Federation Square, and from Flinders Street south across the Yarra.
Interspersed among the many existing landmarks, including State Library Victoria, Melbourne Town Hall, the Arts Centre spire and Flinders Street Station, are a number of buildings and monuments that might have appeared on the skyline if certain projects once mooted for our city had gone ahead, including:
?Peter Corrigan’s pyramid-shaped building for a new museum (1985),
?Robin Boyd’s Bourke Street development (1965), and
?several entries in the ‘Landmark for Melbourne’ competition (1978).
The artist Lewis Brownlie is originally from the United Kingdom and is now based in Geelong. He has spent several years drawing Melbourne, one building at a time, for ‘The Melbourne Map’.
