A striking modern façade inserted in Melbourne’s most intact historic streetscape provided a new image for the Grand Hyatt which responds to the scale and texture of the surroundings.

The Grand Hyatt Hotel was originally developed in the mid 1980s when uncertainty in architectural style resulted in buildings dressed in conservative post-modern façades. The Hotel consists of a 23 storey tower over podiums that front Collins and Russell Streets. The podium fronting Collins Street contained shops, a food court and a restaurant and conference rooms above, all arranged around a vast atrium. This project redeveloped this podium and provided high quality retail space with new office space above.

Several elements contributed to the quality of the existing fabric of Collins Street including a legible parapet height, a variable rhythm of columns, cornices and windows and richly detailed shopfronts and entrances. The new façade responded directly to these elements with a two storey shopfront of columns, projecting windows and canopies creating fine grain and detail addressing the street, with a two storey gridded screen of perforated metal and glass panels above giving a civic scale and texture to the elevation. A gold coloured floating parapet crowns the composition while referencing the colour of the inserted gold canopies below.

Three new floors of office space were added above the existing podium, set back from the street façade to maintain the historic scale of the streetscape. The leaning, facetted face of the office floors further distances these floors from the street in visual terms.

Internally the atrium was reduced and the retailing reconfigured creating a new laneway style route through the building to the hotel lobby and Russell Street. Acknowledging its prime retail location on Collins Street, many of the new units are directly entered from the street, reversing the previous internalised layout.