Totem City

Totem City was Hindley & Co's competition entry for the 2015 Power Street Loop Competition, where the proposal received a High Commendation award. The brief sat within a stretch of Melbourne shaped by rapid, seemingly chaotic development. The CBD's towers to the north, the speeding trucks spiralling around the Loop, the massive Citylink pylons, the commercial signage and the surrounding centres for visual and performing arts read, in the studio's view, as honest expressions of how the city lives and presents itself.

The studio's question was whether a designed object could reconcile that urban energy with the natural world. They proposed treating the Power Street Loop site as an oasis of bush in the middle of the concrete jungle, with Totem City staged to amplify rather than soften the contrast.

The proposal is a series of columns. Each column is made from stacked concrete blocks suspended off a central blade of mirrored stainless steel. The concrete is raw and ancient, while the steel is highly technical. Its mirrored surface reflects the surrounding planting and, in places, gives the illusion of transparency, so the concrete first reads as floating, putting the law of gravity itself into question.

Although the columns are totemic in character, they are arranged with rational, meticulous order, reading as contemporary city buildings pared back to their essence. The concrete is intended to weather over time and pick up lichen and moss. When the site floods, the columns will be reflected in standing water, a deliberate reminder that as oceans rise, today's high-rise cities could end up sitting in water too. The scale of the work is kept human, neither overshadowed by the surrounding trees nor confrontational with the neighbouring apartments.

The project sits within a clear cultural lineage. It pays homage to the minimalism of Donald Judd, the work of Philip K. Smith III, and the architectural ideas of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rem Koolhaas.

Credits: Hindley & Co (design lead). Photography by Anne Hindley. Vittoria Taccone, interior designer.