Can an image capture an experience? Every so often one is fortunate to have a truly unique, new and revelatory experience of architecture and space. Southern Cross Station in Melbourne by Grimshaw’s offers such an experience. But I have not seen an image it would seemwhich adequately conveys the experience.
It is interesting for architecture, landscape and urban design . Because the boundaries between built space, enclosed space and open space, inside and out are not clear, the inside bleeds into the outside and vice versa. So thankyou to Grimshaw. Southern Cross Station is a delight to experience!
(image courtesy Ian)
Something of the genius of Grimshaw’s Southern Cross Station discernible through experience is to be found in this explanation of solid-void theory in Matthew Fredrick’s ‘101 Things I Learned in Architecture School'(2007);
Solid-void theory “holds that the volumetric spaces shaped or implied by the placement of solid objects are as important as, or more important than, the objects themselves.
A three dimensional space is considered a positive space if it has defined space and a sense of boundary or threshold between inside and out. Positive spaces can be defined in an infinite number of ways by points, lines, planes, solid volumes, trees, building edges, columns, walls, sloped earth, and innumerable other elements.”
The Savill Building Great Windsor Park by Glenn Howells Architects shares some remarkable similarities in approach and aesthetics with Grimshaw’s Southern Cross Station? This building seems to differ in that it is a fully enclosed space?[www.hughpearman.com/2006/20.html]