Melbourne Central

This shopping centre complex (with 300 stores, a cinema complex, bars and eateries) subsumed a number of Melbourne’s arcades and alleyways when it was built. It also houses a lead shot tower dating from 1889. The old brick chimney props incongruously beneath a great glass pyramid, a staid structure in a fast-moving retail environment. Ironically, the centre’s most recent redevelopment re-created the alleyways and arcades over which it was built only a decade or so before. New lanes, made to look old with bluestones, create café and retail precincts. It can be fiendishly noisy, confusing and characterless, but the scores of students who shop, eat and socialise here don’t seem to mind.