Melbourne Central Shopping Centre (Melbourne)

Melbourne Central is a large shopping, office, and public transport hub in the city of Melbourne, Australia. The complex includes the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre, which was refurbished in 2005 by architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall; the Melbourne Central railway station (a part of the City Loop underground railway and formerly called Museum); and the 211 m high office tower with its distinctive black colour and two communications masts.

Contained underneath the shopping centre's massive glass cone sits the Coop's Shot Tower which was built on the site between 1889 and 1890. It ceased to be used in 1960. The tower was retained to become a focal-point of the centre.

The original design of the shopping centre, office tower, and railway station was by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. The shopping centre's original primary tenant was the first Australian branch of the Daimaru department store, which closed in 2002 after a decade of unprofitable operation. Daimaru also briefly had an operation on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which also closed.

The renovated centre, with a postmodern design, by architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall, aimed to open the complex to more natural light, new street-front shopping strips, and bubble-like additions to the footbridge across Little Lonsdale Street, but largely compromised the geometrical modern themed design of Kurokawa.

Melbourne Central currently has around 390 stores. There is a footbridge across Lonsdale Street to the adjacent Myer department store, with the layout of the centre allowing people to walk almost uninterrupted through some form of a shopping centre for over half of the city's width or 5 city blocks, from La Trobe street to Little Collins Street. This is able to occur via Melbourne Central which joins to Myer which in turn joins to David Jones over Bourke Street Mall.

The upper levels of the centre house a Hoyts Cinema complex as well as bars and nightclubs.