Peter Elliott Architecture + Urban Design

With a level of subtlety that is rare in the political domain, Victoria’s gracious nineteenth-century Parliament House, which sits on Spring Street watching benevolently over Melbourne, has recently gained an exquisite, and quite unseen, addition of 102 parliamentary offices designed by Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design.

Built in stages between 1856 and 1893 to a design by Peter Kerr and John George Knight, Parliament House grew from the inside out in the sense that its remarkably beautiful interior spaces – the Legislative Assembly, the Legislative Council, the Library, Queens Hall and the Vestibule – all preceded the completion of the exterior facade.

Described by Philip Goad as “an unfinished masterpiece,” Parliament House was devoid of any offices for the Parliamentarians who spend many of their working