46 Little Latrobe Street: the office of Edmond and Corrigan

Conrad Hamann begins his preface to Cities of Hope Rehearsed/Remembered, the monograph on the Melbourne architectural practice of Edmond & Corrigan, describing the interior of their office at 46 Little Latrobe Street and its contents. Hamann makes a connection between the interior qualities of the office and the architectural output of Edmond & Corrigan, specifically rmit Building 8. Hamann writes: “Inside both the office and the great university building […] one finds one’s way through these interiors by experience, like grasping the world of a play or the themes and relationships in a sequence of history.” Much has been written about Building 8 and its contribution to Australian architectural discourse including a three-volume monograph published in 1996 documenting its design, essays scrutinizing it, and a collection of writings by Corrigan and Edmond. Yet the building designed and occupied by the architectural practice at no. 46 has gone largely without comment. For 30 years, from 1987 until the passing of Peter Corrigan in 2016, the building and the office from which projects such as Building 8 were shaped, was an accomplice to the architectural life of Melbourne — whether that of the student of architecture who attended the design studio run around the office meeting table, the employee or contributor to the design of buildings, stages or costumes, the guest in the library, or to one of the many who faced an ‘Irish coffee’ late into the night.