Protected: You’ll never walk alone

In what is billed by its creators as the ‘panel that hits the pavement and tests our urban fabric, 15 minutes at a time’, one of Mpavilion’s Design Odyssey panelists – award-winning creative Matt Lawson – spoke to the importance of footpaths being designed for pairs, meaning that any odd numbers from three upwards are destined to walk alone.

It was just one point in a lively and wide-ranging discussion typical of the event, but it really got me thinking, then and since. Matt’s fellow panelist was Rose Chong of the inimitable Rose Chongs Costume Shop on Gertrude Street, a shop and destination long well-known to Melbournians and the city’s visitors and latterly to readers of Time Out, who once called it ‘the second coolest street in the world.’ While each will have taken an entirely different walk, their thoughts converged on the desirability of ‘designing’ for diversity (and, therefore, ‘access’) of people, amenity, activity, price point, housing, and experience across any 15-minute odyssey.

While it has felt the effects of gentrification, Gertrude Street remains a flagship for the diversity the panel speaks of, its journey – ‘from heroin to sequins’, says Rose – across the decades a story of change and continuity, a place where it’s perfectly possible ‘to buy a $9 ice cream or a box of the same ice cream for $6’, and where its history of access and inclusion continues to resonate. It’s a place where that much overused word ‘vibrant’ is made for. Its where people love to be, to work, live, and play in, and where, as one resident put it, you won’t or oughtn’t find a Sportsgirl. It’s a Jane Jacobs kind of a place, where people look out for each other in the most nuanced sense of what that means. It’s where people tend not to walk alone.

Big thank you to Rose Chong and award-winning creative Matt Lawson for giving up their time to share their own design odysseys, to Mpavilion for inviting us all to chat, and to the audience for making it out to Queen Victoria Gardens in the middle of a working day. Anything more, do see Mpavilion’s program of events – wonderful stuff.   

Images: Christian Müller Adobe stock and Rosa Chong Costume Shop.