80 COLLINS STREET

A luxury retail and dining precinct that re-invents Melbourne’s renowned retail laneway typology.

Site entries are identified with inlaid bronze signage, marking the transition from public street to retail laneway.

Society restaurant's brand, also by Studio Ongarato, is elegantly de-bossed into the travertine facade of the laneway lift lobby.

Kinetic identification signage for the Next Hotel creates an expanding and contracting Moiré effect as the sign face rotates.

QIC’s premium mixed use precinct in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD is home to two commercial towers, a boutique hotel, retail laneway network and some of Melbourne’s finest dining establishments. Studio Ongarato collaborated with an international design team including U.N. Studio, Jouin Manku, Universal Design Studio, Woods Bagot and Russell & George to bring the development to life.

With frontages on Collins, Exhibition and Little Collins Streets, site entries are identified with inlaid bronze signage, marking the transition from street to lane. Subsequently a considered sequence of wayfinding and retail signage guides and enhances the visitor experience through a multi-layered pedestrian network, connecting commercial tower lobbies, identifying retail tenants and creating an authentic urban experience.

Studio Ongarato’s design thematic, ‘mise-en-scène’, informs the composition of vertical signage ribbons purposefully positioned across differing façade types. Illuminated signage elements that are projecting, stacked and suspended, reinforce the depth and drama of the narrow laneway spaces.

The commercial lobby tower interiors feature thoughtfully integrated signage in glass and stainless steel that enhance and unify the minimal interior aesthetic across the separate North and South towers.

The basement carpark experience is enlivened with a series of perspectival graphic treatment painted directly to the raw concrete surfaces, leading visitors down to the end of trip facilities and beyond.

  • Project Scope

    Environmental Design

    Branding, Wayfinding and Signage

  • Collaborators

    Architecture: Woods Bagot, Universal Design Studio, Russell & George

    Photography: Peter Bennetts