Mapping Melbourne

One of the more acclaimed pieces of public art in Melbourne is Petrus Spronk's 'Architectural Fragment' on Swanston Street. Crafted in the same bluestone from which the streets are constructed, this oddity springs suddenly from out of the ground in front of the State Library. The piece has been widely praised for its implied symbolism, which warns us that our civilisation, like those of the past, will inevitably become a dead fragment of its current self, an archeology of the future. But how prescient is this apparent message?

Although it purports to provoke, the fragment ultimately fails to convey the supposed sense of dread, of apocalyptic doom-saying, because of its painfully anachronistic geometry. Its classical form reflects not our own society but that of the already buried past. It slots neatly into the established Western archetype of the dead culture, that of the Parthenon and the Roman Forum. It is not a challenging image but a familiar, reassuring avatar of age-old romantic notions of the past. One could almost imagine Goethe sitting contemplatively nearby. Of course the geometry is not entirely bound to antiquity, Melbourne has its share of Neo-classical buildings, not least the State Library itself, (which the fragment echoes with a semi-obscured "Library" emblazoned across it in pompous Latin font) but even these are symbols of an already extinct past, co-opted and comfortably quantified. They were not built within living memory and do not present themselves to us as vital objects. They are not our buildings but those of a long dead, alien generation.

What would be truly scary would be to have the form of a contemporary building emerging as a symbol of destruction. Not a simulacrum of the familiar Greco-Roman ruins, but, for instance, the brash laissez-faire positivism of the corporate skyscraper. To see our living, breathing cosmopolitan lifestyle reduced to a skeleton, that really would be an uncomfortable exposure. But we shy away from this, and so the concept behind the sculpture loses all power. The difference between what the sculpture is and what it is supposed to be is the difference between knowing one is going to die, and really knowing one is going to die; that is, the difference between the formal, rudimentary knowledge that all living things must die, and the gut-wrenching realisation that this animated being that is 'me' will one day be annihilated. The skulls in the catacombs of Paris are horrifying only if you picture them as human heads and if you force yourself to accept that, under the skin, one's own head is nought but a stained, yellow skull. Otherwise they are no different from the decor in a second-rate Goth club. And here is the flaw in the Architectural Fragment; it is not a real warning, not a genuine sign of horror, but merely a titillating spectacle, playing by the established rules of apocalypse porn. No more haunting than Bruce Willis' pathetic death in Armageddon, it similarly raises the spectre of total oblivion, while ultimately reassuring us that EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK.

In this sense the Architectural Fragment is a distillation of our timidity in acknowledging Thanatos and of our blind confidence in survival. We are petrified of climate change yet make no real efforts to curb it. We are all familiar with images of melting ice caps and simulations of flooded cities, yet cannot truly imagine them impacting our daily existence. Looked at this way, the sculpture may well transpire to be an architectural fragment, just not in the way originally envisioned.

Interesting little number here. An information film on the building of the Loop. It disturbingly resembles the opening scenes of Threads in parts, and the voiceover worries by describing citizens as "commodities" of the city. Meanwhile a man in a bowler hat and 3 piece suit climbs to the top of a concrete block, places on a scientist's white coat, slowly reveals a pistol and shoots into the air. Gentlemen, unleash hypermodernity!

The City Loop was implemented in 1985 to alleviate rail congestion. With Melbourne's recent boom in population it no longer fulfils this end. What we have now is a claustrophobic commuter's Hades.

PARLIAMENT

Approaching from the East in peak hour, Parliament station is the first arrival. This station is perhaps the most tube-like of all stations, being the disembarkment point of the majority of Melbourne's Civil Servants (yours truly included). Crisp and anti-septic you advance to the meat-processing lines of the escalator. Here the station is notably different from the tube, since the walls are not lined with advertising, but are composed of a distinct monochromatic absence of visual distraction. It is quite nice not to have soft drinks and tickets to Mama Mia stuffed down your throat as you glide upwards, yet this acommerciality has the unnerving effect of evoking clinical dystopias and making the abattoir reflections even more prescient.

You will find as you reach the top that there are pictures of Victorian refinery, taken from inside the Parliament building itself. It is a peculiar inversion of the stations in the Moscow Metro system. We are not participants in, but detached observers of, opulent luxury. Peasants doled out pictures of Marie Antoinette. But never mind, let us eat cake! For here it is at the coffee stall, purveyor of sweets and second rate Java. The fuel of the proles, the lubricant of the beast.

There is better coffee in the nearby Italian-run cafes, but the black gloop here is made for you faster, and more anonymously. It is for this reason that it has a constant hover of customers. Familiarity is unwelcome at 7:30am.

Many morning commuters will perhaps not notice, but waiting on the platforms of Parliament one is subjected to easy listening music to subversively sooth/bludgeon the somewhat frenetic atmosphere into a neutral docility. And so it is with James Blunt in the ears one re-boards the Loop.

MELBOURNE CENTRAL

Initially, arriving at Melbourne Central feels little different from Parliament, except perhaps that the platforms are a little shabbier. It is only when disembarking and finding oneself bamboozled with not the quasi-benevolence of the Civil Service, but the raging maelstrom of retail commerce that the difference becomes apparent. The station is housed within the Melbourne Central shopping complex, and before even emerging into daylight the rail passenger finds themselves in the middle of an underground lair of supermarkets, newsagents and coffee stalls. This plane has to be negociated to escape, but the escalators lead only to the main attraction; the mall itself. The underground retail strip is but a prelude to the masterwork upstairs.

Housed inside a soaring glass dome is an old factory, now retail space, surrounded by a plethora of shopping dreams. The outside has been caged inside. The past aggressively co-opted by the transparent, hi-tech phallus of hypermodernity. It rises above the city as a latter-day fertility symbol, bestowing its glory on all who enter. Purchase a new pair of jeans, order a latte and ye shall be blessed.

Interestingly, when it was built in 1981, this station was named Museum, in reference to the nearby State Library, which previously housed a museum complex. However, this inconvenient and distracting intellectual name ("Wha? Where's the museum?" "Shut up and shop") was dropped in 1997 with the arrival of the current retail centre.

FLAGSTAFF

Flagstaff is in many ways the mirror image of Parliament. From inside, the two stations are virtually identical. And just as Parliament serves the Civil Service offices, Flagstaff serves those of the judiciary, with many law courts and law firms being housed nearby. This 'professional' nature of the station is reinforced by its closure on weekends and public holidays. In other words, "If you aren't working here you have no business being here!"

SOUTHERN CROSS

Southern Cross (formerly Spencer Street) station is easily my favourite of the Loop destinations. It's undulating roof sits atop a grand open-spaced celebration of the railways, like those cathedrals of modernity in 19th century England, France and America. But with its blue neon lights, gleaming steel and 'Skybus'to the airport, it takes on a distinctly 21st (or possibly 22nd) century edge. The magnificent structure was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw. Like Norman Foster, Grimshaw is an architect of hideously brazen corporatism, and yet whose geometry often instills a sense of wonder. JG Ballard is unashamedly in love with the Heathrow Hilton, for the reason that "I wish the whole of Britain looked as though everyone were about to leave for Mars" and Southern Cross too achieves this. The commuter arriving not at a banalified structure of drudgery but a spaceport. On closer inspection the destinations are less exotic than Mars (Bendigo, Geelong etc) but the sense of being about to leave for an otherworldly adventure is always palpable. Even the proximity to yet another dowdy and anonymous retail outlet cannot impinge on its vitality. The major problem is that after arriving into the kind of prophesied future of techno-leisure we read about in childrens' books, the commuters file out of the exits in order to fulfil their mundane socio-economic commitments. The station is in the right place we just need the world to catch up.

FLINDERS STREET

Flinders Street is in strict contrast to Southern Cross. It's facade, often featured in articles like 'Melbourne's Best Buildings' is well regarded by Melbournians, yet represents that sickly Victoriana that dominates too much of the city. It is the type of colonial posturing that remains inexplicably popular. Why live in an imagined past when you can shape the future? Most offensive though is the interior. The platforms and concourses are shabby and the trains allocated to them in a confusing and illogical manner. Trains to Frankston may leave from platform 8 or 9, which often involves a last minute pelt when the legendarily inconsistent Connex trains disappear from their scheduled times before suddenly and mysteriously reappearing. The sound system is half-conked out and miscalibrated, leading to muffled and incomprehensible announcements some days and aggressively shrill and loud announcements the next. The ticket entrance is crammed and ill-equipped to deal with large crowds. The saving grace of the place is an underground laneway of independent record shops, clothes shops and a zine publishing house. Yet this is mostly closed in the morning and evening, making it a treat for the young, the unemployed and the flanuer. At peak time, when pulsating crowds infest the leisureliness of the surroundings with a hellish stupor, their doors are firmly closed. They say to the herds of daytimne employment "this is not for you!". And when one emerges like Orpheus from this commuter Hades, who else greets you but Cerberus, his heads emerging from the wall.

The message? The hellishness has only just begun my friends...