From bins to bonbons, Melbourne's street style is all in the detail

From the beginning, the team's aim was to conjure a 24-hour international city comparable to Paris or New York.

"Cities are about presentation," he says. "The better you present a city, the more likely people are to come."

But if you don't notice his design, Dryden's just as happy. His role is stitching the fabric of the city together, and it's best if the seams don't show. While most of his work – tram stop awnings, water fountains, kiosks, bluestone pavement, rubbish bins and benches – is at street level, he's also designing the lighting several metres above.

Dryden refers to his cohesive, street-level design as providing "the frame of the city". He recalls the mantra of his mentor, Ron Jones: "'I want a really nice rubbish bin, but I don't want to see it. If I do notice it I want it beautifully detailed."'

The idea is not to compete with the architecture. Transparent tram awnings, for example, are designed to reveal the city's architectural beauty. The unobtrusive lighting provides safety and highlights building features.

Dryden works on 40 projects a year and over three decades has designed around 1000, he says. "We try to keep our material palette really simple: we've got granite, bluestone, stainless steel, asphalt.

"Street furniture has a 25-30 year life, so the design has to be timeless." Georg Jensen's Scandinavian clean lines are his yardstick. "We've designed street furniture exactly the same way as Georg Jensen – with a classical, minimalist look."

It is also practical. His metal rod benches, for example, don't just allow rain to fall through, but the air to cool around it in summer. And unlike the original heritage colours of Brunswick green, stainless steel doesn't have to be repainted. "The beauty with stainless steel is you clean it and it looks like it came out of the factory yesterday."

Just as designing the city has its own timeframe, designing its furniture has another issue of scale.

"When we design something we always worry about whether it's big enough," he says. "You can't be timid. The longer the bench, the better. Proportion is something that kills us all the time."

But if the city designer's job is to provide a frame, isn't grandiosity counter-intuitive?

"When we walk into a factory and we think 'we've really stuffed up' we know we've got it right," he says. "It's really easy to make stuff look too small. It looks ungenerous, dinky and like you got it wrong. The reality is when you put it in a street, it vanishes. We want it way too big because when it's in place it's fine."

So too with Christmas decorations. This year's designs are a "table setting" writ large. The bells and stars above Bourke Street are deceptively small but are half a metre high. Docklands has giant bon bons.

"I love the Christmas table you have with your family," he says. "The beautiful napkin rings, the star on the table. I've just done a big version of it. The idea is to make the city feel like home."

If it all seems a bit too European, Dryden says he tried an all-Australian theme of gumnuts and gum leaves. "People didn't like it at all," he says. "They preferred a traditional European-style Christmas." Perhaps his blend of Nutcracker toy soldiers with John Brack's classic Melbourne painting will win the public's hearts and minds.