AMP Square
| AMP Square | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Type | Office tower |
| Architectural style | International Style, Brutalist, Early Modernist |
| Address | 527-555 Bourke Street, Melbourne |
| Country | Australia |
| Coordinates | 37°48′57.8″S 144°57′27.9″E / 37.816056°S 144.957750°E |
| Completed | 1969 |
| Client | The Australian Mutual Provident Society |
| Height | 133 m (436 ft) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 26 |
| Floor area | 7,743 m2 (83,340 sq ft) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Bates Smart & McCutcheon |
AMP Square (527–535 Bourke Street) is a skyscraper situated in Melbourne, Australia, on the corner of Bourke and Williams Streets in the central business district. The tower, designed to maximise floor area with respect to the lot size, is one of the earliest examples of a corporate modernism in Australia. A 2010 renovation of the surrounding pedestrian ways and creation of covered walkways has made the tower more integrated with the St James building and St James Plaza which share the block.
Prior to the AMP building, there existed a school on the site founded by The “Pioneer Church” which was erected four years after the establishment of Melbourne on 11 February 1837. The “Pioneer Church” was succeeded by what is now the St James Old Cathedral on 9 November 1839, which sat on a five-acre lot of land situated between William, Bourke, and Collins Streets. St. James Old Cathedral faced many issues after the turn of the century with the pressure of occupying valuable land within the Central Business District, maintenance problems and a dwindling congregation. The Cathedral narrowly escaped demolition and was relocated up the road to Batman Street, near Flagstaff Gardens in West Melbourne. Nearby Church Street, Church Lane, and St James Lane, all attest their name to the relocated Cathedral. The Cathedral also lends its name to the St James Building and Plaza, which resides on The AMP Square.
With the surge of growth seen in major western cities emerging after the end of the Second World War, a fluxing demand for large scale high-rise developments within these cities came which, using an à la mode contemporary style, took use of modern technologies and left over materials from the war.
“On the suggestion of Sir Robert Law-Smith, an influential member of the Victorian board of AMP”, it was agreed upon that AMP’s new development fronting Bourke and William Streets in Melbourne would be designed by the San Francisco Office of International American architects–Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). SOM required an Australian partner for the project, approaching Osborn McCutcheon of the Australian architectural firm Bates, Smart and McCutcheon, responsible for designing prior AMP commercial office complexes including the AMP Annex on Market Street. After first resisting to co-operate, McCutcheon agreed to travel to San Francisco to meet with the partners at SOM and arrange a joint venture on the AMP project. It was decided that SOM would be responsible for the development and design of the project, with all the documentation past the design development stage handled by Bates Smart and McCutcheon including the supervision of the construction. The key architects driving the project at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill were Edward Charles Bassett, Richard Foster, and Mark Goldstein whom were responsible for signature design features in project such as the angled colonnades on the L-shaped St James building, and Helmut Jacoby whom was responsible for the perspective drawings.
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