Costco AU

Who would have thought that a Costco could look like this?


[Photo by Peter Hyatt | via World Buildings Directory]

It's the Costco at Waterfront City in Melbourne's Docklands, designed by NHArchitecture and completed in 2009. The architects describe it as such:

[It] demonstrates how large format retailing need not conform to the traditional stereotype of a big pitched-roof shed. The project challenges this precept by combining Costco’s globally successful retail strategy with VicUrban’s design agenda promoting quality contemporary architecture and public space.

Big box retailing does not have a good track record for promoting leading architecture and urban design. Traditionally banished to the industrial edges of the city and symbolised by a massive shed in a sea of asphalt, the reputation is often well deserved. Melbourne’s new headquarters for Costco overcomes this conventional attitude.

Of course, inside it looks exactly like every other Costco:


[Photo by Trevor Mein | via World Buildings Directory]