The recent conversion of the historic Goods Shed North at Melbourne Docklands rises like a phoenix from the ashes, a renovating of a building that had been derelict for thirty years. An abundance of architects have been involved – the base building conversion was by Elenberg Fraser Architecture, the fitout by BVN Architecture, and Lovell Chen was the heritage architect. You can still see what they started with – the southern half exists unchanged, split from the northern half with the construction of the bridge that extended Collins Street and opened Docklands to the city grid. Unapologetically, the building is a shed built in 1889 using a system of mass-produced components: lightweight wrought-iron roof trusses, heavy cast-iron columns and brick outer walls. Arranged in three top-lit bays, the central one is larger to form a kind of nave with aisles. Few people today would disagree that the sheds are beautiful. Though to get a sense of how they might have been viewed by people 120 years ago, think of the industrial precincts that skirt our cities today, place like Dandenong, filled with utilitarian sheds. “When you’re working in such a beautiful shell,” says Ninotschka Titchkosky, principal of BVN Architecture, “you don’t have to throw money at things like you might in a typical office building. It already had atmosphere – we just had to enhance it, achieve functionality and make sure the bits we put in work with it.”