Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months. Now that everything had returned to normal, he was surprised that there had been no obvious beginning, no point beyond which their lives had moved into a clearly more sinister dimension.
J. G. Ballard, High-Rise, 1975
The opening lines of J. G. Ballard’s famous novel refer to a period of turmoil in which a fictional modernist apartment building in London is both stage and character. The building at 99 Spring Street in Melbourne’s political precinct,’s publication, was not the vessel for a dystopian societal collapse – but it was part of the backdrop to the “unusual events” of the COVID-19 pandemic and Melbourne’s drawn-out lockdown restrictions, during which the city was near-empty, save for the steady stream of protesters advancing up Spring Street. March Studio directors Rodney Eggleston and Anne-Laure Cavigneaux lived in one of the apartments during the pandemic, but decided to move soon after, prompted by the changed nature of the city.
