Bourke Street Mall is the retail heart of Melbourne, housing the city’s main department stores and flagship specialty retail outlets. Fully refurbished in 2006, Bourke Street Mall was transformed with the removal and replacement of cluttered street lighting with a catenary lighting system suspended from a tensile cable net, which also supports seasonal decorations.
Ronstan Tensile Architecture supplied all components and installed the cable net and building connections to exacting geometry set by GHD and design by Studio 505 at a height of 11m to 14m between buildings along the mall. The installation was particularly complex due to the overhead power lines associated with a tramway, which runs through the mall. The catenary provides functional and seasonal decorative suspended luminaires that now sees this urban space utilised well into the evenings.