In Macaulay’s attempt to follow the history of Melbourne erasing its landscape and history, uniquely and unequivocally Melbourne, it serves as an original mixed-use zone with workers cottages supplanted between industries. It has been subject to rapid evolutions of brick, to concrete, to commercial glass facades, all as elevated flat walls demarcating space but devoid of sensory depth and interchange. Juhani Pallasmaa’s ‘The eyes of the skin’ evokes an ideal that instead of limiting architecture to a 2D plane of the visual sense, exchange the role of the body as the locus of perception that integrates us with space.
In order for this solution to be embraced, the building must become a didactic exemplar whose gestures
connect built form with ground level retention through haptic relief. These are referenced from existing local urban anomalies, binding the building to its context and reassuring its inhabitants its understanding of place.
