<a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/developers/s-p-setia">SP Setia</a> has lodged plans for a $750 million, three-tower mixed-use precinct that would complete the long-running redevelopment of Carlton's former Carlton United Breweries site.

The proposal at <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/185-195-queensberry-street-carlton-vic-3053">46-78 Bouverie Street and 185-195 Queensberry Street</a> spans a 6,468 sqm site, the last remaining undeveloped parcels within the former brewery's 2007 masterplan.

Designed by <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/architects/cox-architecture">COX Architecture</a>, the development will comprise two purpose-built student accommodation towers and a third build-to-sell apartment tower above a shared commercial podium and basement.

Across the three towers, SP Setia is proposing 606 build-to-sell apartments and 1,499 student accommodation units containing 2,009 beds.

The apartments will sit in the tallest tower, which will rise nearly 200m and 55 storeys. It will become&nbsp;one of the more substantial new build-to-sell apartment projects at the northern edge of Melbourne's CBD.

The apartment mix is weighted toward smaller inner-city product, with 188 studios, 206 one-bedroom apartments, 192 two-bedroom apartments and 20 three-bedroom apartments

<img alt="First look: SP Setia plans three-tower finale for Carlton’s former CUB precinct" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="8271bc87-1b0a-41b7-ac73-a425ee375261" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/3_2.png?VersionId=G4lw23o90B1boX4k4dj7rdz2ZEajS9wy" />

Part of the precinct will be a large-scale&nbsp;3,684 sqm supermarket and a further 2,198 sqm of speciality retail, creating close to 5,900 sqm of new commercial space within the precinct.

But one of the biggest components of the proposal is what sits between the buildings.

Around 4,650 sqm, or roughly 72 per cent of the site, will be publicly accessible open space, incorporating plazas, pedestrian connections, landscaped laneways and retail spill-out areas.

The ground plane is intended to finally complete pedestrian connections envisaged when the CUB masterplan was first approved nearly two decades ago, stitching together Victoria Street, Queensberry Street, Bouverie Street and Swanston Street through the former brewery precinct.

Urbis said the development would "complete the CUB precinct", with the public realm providing important north-south and east-west connections through what is currently the final undeveloped portion of the masterplanned site.

SP Setia is also exploring a new linear park within the Bouverie Street road reserve, with the concept to be developed further with the City of Melbourne through the planning process.

The proposal is being pursued through the Victorian Government's Development Facilitation Program under Clause 53.23 for significant residential development with affordable housing.

The planning report acknowledges the proposed heights exceed those contemplated under the original Comprehensive Development Plan and masterplan, but argues the built-form context has changed considerably over the past two decades.

Urbis said the three towers would instead create a stepped transition between Carlton and the Hoddle Grid, rising progressively from the 94.1-metre Tower One along the Queensberry Street edge to the 199.44-metre Tower Three closer to the established CBD-scale buildings to the south.

<img alt="SP Setia" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e885a07a-592c-40fc-bf82-e6dbaf32da54" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-21%20at%208.52.24%E2%80%AFAM.png?VersionId=7s_ErUkSKAdY1mAWp3GRZgMNCGtwhk5m" />

SP Setia plans to deliver the development across three stages.

Stage One would deliver the basement, podium and retail areas for the entire precinct alongside the first student tower. Tower Two would follow in Stage Two, before the 606-apartment Tower Three is delivered as the final stage.

If approved and delivered, the project would close out a redevelopment process that has been underway since the former brewery masterplan was approved in 2007, adding more than 2,600 student beds and apartments to a precinct already home to Swanston Central, the Barak Building, RMIT Design Hub and several large student accommodation developments.

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Joel Robinson

SP Setia plans three-tower finale for Carlton’s former CUB precinct

Melbourne developer Lowe Living is seeking to add to its growing bayside apartment pipeline, filing plans for a boutique eight-residence development in tightly held Middle Park.

Lowe Living, which has built much of its development portfolio across Melbourne's affluent bayside and south-east suburbs, is behind the plans for the 730 sqm site at <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/123-125-erskine-street-middle-park-vic-3206">123-125 Erskine Street</a>, just off Armstrong Street and within the Armstrong Street Neighbourhood Activity Centre.

The developer is seeking approval for a five-storey residential building above two basement levels, with just eight large-format apartments and 18 car spaces.

“This is a deliberately very different proposition for us,"&nbsp;Tim Lowe, Co-Founder of Lowe Living, said.

"Eight residences is exceptionally boutique, but that's precisely what this site calls for.

“There is a strong community in Middle Park and the surrounding suburbs who have spent decades building a life here. They no longer want the maintenance of a large period home, but they aren't prepared to compromise on space, quality or location. We think there is a real opportunity to capture that hyper local market. A site like this rarely comes to market.”

<img alt="Lowe " data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="875fe572-0f14-4d90-9e11-55b28dd07731" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-21%20at%208.42.49%E2%80%AFAM.png?VersionId=GDNQRv9BfpR9r1zkZ5UDyUM4ZvpIksut" />

The low-density proposal has been designed by Cera Stribley and is being progressed through the Victorian Government's Great Design Fast Track pathway, having already secured eligibility from the Minister for Planning.

The Office of the Victorian Government Architect supported its eligibility after finding the proposal demonstrated consistency with the program's seven design principles, while the project's financial feasibility has also been independently confirmed by Invest Victoria.

The project is targeting the downsizer market, with the planning documents describing the homes as larger-format residences and noting the two penthouses could otherwise have been configured as four separate apartments.

<img alt="Lowe 2" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="60ab0987-2da6-4175-adac-315dcf6053c6" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-21%20at%208.43.15%E2%80%AFAM.png?VersionId=bOCPH0B2MFwlmaRW.TTCF9TzyifgVoQI" />

The site has dual frontage to Erskine Street and Canterbury Place and currently comprises a collection of commercial buildings used as offices, including a former heritage bakehouse, a former stable, a later gabled addition and a central courtyard.

It sits within the Commercial 1 Zone and the Armstrong Street Commercial Precinct heritage overlay, with the existing property classified as a contributory heritage place.

Heritage has subsequently played a significant role in Cera Stribley's design.

The front section of the former bakehouse facing Erskine Street will be retained, including its return walls, street-facing hipped roof and chimneys, while the Erskine Street façade and part of the western return wall of the former stable will also be incorporated into the new development.

Levels four and five will be set back five metres from the retained stable façade, while bricks removed through demolition are proposed to be salvaged and reused within the new building where possible.

<img alt="Lowe 3" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e97927a9-a2de-4a0f-83b6-65451238abfa" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/Screenshot%202026-08-21%20at%208.43.06%E2%80%AFAM.png?VersionId=VR44AChLrX9q1XPB9GvVQV.ALXXbe4gC" />

Rather than presenting as a single five-storey building to Erskine Street, Cera Stribley has broken the development into a series of distinct forms.

A three-storey infill element will sit between the retained bakehouse and stable façades, with the upper levels recessed behind the heritage fabric. Canterbury Place will similarly feature two three-storey podium forms, separated by a central pedestrian accessway, before the upper two levels step back from the street.

A pedestrian through-link will run through the centre of the project between Erskine Street and Canterbury Place, creating entrances from both sides of the site and introducing landscaping and communal areas through the ground plane.

Landscape architect Acre has designed planting across the ground level, private terraces and upper levels, including a feature canopy tree at level three and integrated planting and arbours across the level four terraces. Five existing Erskine Street trees are proposed to be retained.

Sustainability is also a significant component of the Great Design Fast Track application. The apartments are targeting an average eight-star NatHERS rating, with no residence below 6.5 stars, while the project has achieved a 75 per cent BESS score. Seven of the eight apartments are designed for cross-ventilation, with the remaining residence using mechanically assisted natural ventilation.

The plans also incorporate an 8kWp rooftop solar system, a 5,000-litre rainwater tank and infrastructure allowing future electric vehicle charging for every residence.

Lowe has a strong portfolio across Melbourne's blue-chip suburbs. They recently launched <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/jardin-house-by-lowe-living-camberwell-335-camberwell-road-camberwell-vic-3124">Jardin House by Lowe Living</a> in Camberwell, their first development in the Stonnington LGA.

Lowe Living unveils Middle Park apartment development

Article summary

<ul data-end="888" data-start="289">
	<li data-end="442" data-section-id="8tsh6o" data-start="289">DVB Projects is preparing to launch its second Gold Coast apartment development, with demolition now underway at 137 Old Burleigh Road, Broadbeach.</li>
	<li data-end="573" data-section-id="1nyxl3e" data-start="443">The 34-level tower will comprise just 49 ultra-luxury residences, including half-floor, full-floor and penthouse apartments.</li>
	<li data-end="717" data-section-id="oiyimj" data-start="574">The launch follows strong demand at DVB's nearby Sea Glass project, which is more than 50 per cent sold and currently under construction.</li>
	<li data-end="888" data-section-id="epk9o9" data-start="718">The development adds to the transformation of Old Burleigh Road, with premium beachfront apartment projects continuing to reshape the tightly held Broadbeach strip.</li>
</ul>

<a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/developers/dvb-projects">DVB Projects</a> is preparing to launch its second Gold Coast apartment development, with demolition now underway on the Broadbeach site as the Sydney developer moves closer to bringing the ultra-luxury project to market.

The 34-level tower at <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/137-old-burleigh-road-broadbeach-qld-4218">137 Old Burleigh Road</a> will comprise just 49 residences, ranging from half-floor apartments through to full-floor homes and a penthouse. The launch follows the strong sales performance of DVB's nearby Sea Glass development. More than half of the apartments at Sea Glass, on the other side of Broadbeach, have been snapped up, well ahead of its late 2027 completion

<img alt="DVB Projects to commence demolition on $320m Broadbeach luxury tower" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="2944b4be-c84e-4b54-8dc1-c712e76704c0" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/E02_Exterior_Street%20Level%20Entrance.jpg?VersionId=YoNig7pRdrE3HCue7sUj78LzJteeQf3H" />

The start of demolition at 137 Old Burleigh Road signals DVB Projects’ underlying confidence in the Gold Coast’s luxury beachside apartment sector.

“We see the Gold Coast as one of the most compelling lifestyle markets in Australia, particularly at the premium end where demand continues to deepen,” said Dean Brown, Managing Director of DVB.&nbsp;

“This project has been carefully designed to respond to that demand - delivering large-format residences with a level of quality, privacy and amenity that is still relatively rare in the apartment market on the beachside."

Brown says the site itself is "exceptional."

"Old Burleigh Road is one of the most tightly held beachfront strips, and opportunities to deliver a project of this scale and calibre in this location are extremely limited.”

<img alt="DVB Projects to commence demolition on $320m Broadbeach luxury tower" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="398f377a-c037-455e-9250-0c5e0d84c35b" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/I12_FF%20Balcony.jpg?VersionId=NwOiRWGMubR1c8wthuEfggklcja7al9." />

The project will comprise 40 half-floor residences of approximately 260 sqm, alongside eight full-floor residences spanning around 524 sqm.

A single penthouse will crown the building, featuring a private pool, barbecue area, indoor gym and dedicated entertaining spaces.

Residents will have access to a resort-style suite of amenities, including a 20-metre pool with daybeds, a gymnasium, hot and cold plunge pools, a sauna, and private residents’ lounge and dining facilities.

<img alt="DVB Projects to commence demolition on $320m Broadbeach luxury tower" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="d1642bb0-9a66-4427-a022-dfc0988c6287" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/A02_Pool%20to%20View.jpg?VersionId=c0IXPyn_Gp_Kn3XCwzMrqIVkAdCEwVXP" />

Sales agent Todd Matheson, of <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/project-marketer/pezet-matheson">Pezet Matheson</a>, which is marketing both 137 Old Burleigh Road and Sea Glass, said 137 Old Burleigh Road would address a clear gap in the market for genuine luxury products.

“There are very few opportunities on the Gold Coast where buyers can secure a residence of this size and quality in a new building,” Matheson said.

“What we’re seeing is a growing cohort of downsizers and interstate buyers who still want space - they’re not willing to compromise on living area, entertaining or finishes.

“This project has been designed with that buyer in mind. It offers the scale of a home, combined with the convenience and security of apartment living, in one of the coast’s most desirable positions.”

<img alt="DVB Projects to commence demolition on $320m Broadbeach luxury tower" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="59aae0ca-5639-4320-8aca-d0bf60f48e43" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/E01_Exterior%20Hero.jpg?VersionId=DS8Zfy2WtgUEtdfe0TEUuf1W1GfcZq8S" />

Located on a 1,156 sqm site one block from the beachfront, the development will replace an ageing walk-up building and is expected to contribute to the ongoing transformation of the Old Burleigh Road strip into one of the Gold Coast’s most prestigious residential corridors.

With the development moving into the delivery phase, 137 Old Burleigh Road is slated to hit the market later this year.

[smartcode_project_cta:default project_id=145141]

DVB Projects to launch second Broadbeach apartment tower as demolition commences

<a data-end="327" data-is-only-node="" data-start="250" href="https://www.apartments.com.au/developers/norus-projects" rel="noopener" target="_new">Norus Developments</a> has lodged plans for a new apartment development in Clayton that would add further momentum to the suburb's emerging Green Street corridor.

Plans have been lodged for the consolidated site at <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/1359-1365-centre-road-clayton-vic-3168">1359-1365 Centre Road</a>, where Norus is seeking approval for 218 apartments across a 12-storey apartment building designed by <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/architects/life-architecture-and-urban-design">Life Architecture</a>.

The proposal sits within the Clayton Major Activity Centre at the threshold of the planned Green Street corridor, a landscaped pedestrian connection intended to improve links through the precinct towards Clayton Railway Station.

The development would replace the site's existing collection of low-scale residential and commercial buildings with a single consolidated building, introducing significantly greater housing density to this part of Centre Road.

A retail tenancy is proposed at ground level to activate the Centre Road frontage, accompanied by transparent street interfaces and landscaping intended to create a more pedestrian-focused edge to the development.

<img alt="First look: Norus Developments plans landscape-led apartment project for Clayton’s emerging Green Street" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="0a5a763a-d9e9-4253-af2f-88008de27ebf" src="https://s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/inline-images/Clayton%20a.png?VersionId=S2WJJbat1XVkZwB9SnYtygirXgWHiklX" />

The building has been designed with stepped massing and upper-level setbacks to manage its transition towards surrounding residential properties. The planning report describes the approach as one that integrates the building into the landscape rather than treating landscaping as a secondary element.

"A strong landscape and public realm strategy underpins the proposal," Urbis states in the planning report.

"Public benefits include an affordable housing contribution, a new pocket park, generous landscaped setbacks, deep soil planting and integrated Water Sensitive Urban Design."

The report adds that these elements are intended to create "a permeable, pedestrian-focused ground plane that enhances walkability, supports urban cooling and reinforces the emerging Green Street character."

Biophilic and passive design principles extend through the residential levels, with planting, daylight, natural ventilation and views towards landscaped areas forming part of the amenity strategy.

Parking would be concentrated away from the public realm, with 145 car spaces proposed from the rear laneway rather than dominating the Centre Road frontage.

The proposal follows an extensive pre-application process with the City of Monash. Three formal meetings were held between the project team and Council from December 2025 to March 2026, with the scheme evolving through several concept iterations before the current design was lodged.

The project arrives as Clayton prepares for substantial change around its established activity centre and the wider Suburban Rail Loop precinct. Its position on Centre Road places the development within an existing concentration of shops, services and public transport, while the Green Street connection is intended to strengthen pedestrian access towards Clayton Railway Station.

First look: Norus plans landscape-led apartment project for Clayton’s emerging Green Street

<a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/developers/gardner-vaughan-group">Gardner Vaughan Group</a> has officially commenced construction on Bronze on Chevron, celebrating the sod turning of its first-ever Gold Coast development and marking a significant milestone in the company's continued expansion across South East Queensland.&nbsp;

Following the successful delivery of premium residential developments throughout Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/new-apartments/bronze-on-chevron-8-mawarra-street-chevron-island-qld-4217">Bronze on Chevron</a> represents Gardner Vaughan Group's entry into the Gold Coast market. Bronze will deliver 119 one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments above two ground-level retail tenancies.

[smartcode_project:default project_id=107520 project_image_fid=367193]

The recent sod turning ceremony was attended by Deputy Mayor Mark Hammel, President of the Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club, Cassandra Sedgman, project consultants, purchasers, project partners and invited guests to celebrate the commencement of construction.&nbsp;

Gardner Vaughan Group Chief Executive Officer Simon Betteridge said Bronze on Chevron represented an exciting new chapter for the business.&nbsp;

"We've spent almost four decades building homes that respond to the way people want to live, and we're excited to bring that experience to <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/developments/chevron-island-qld-4217">Chevron Island</a>," Betteridge said.

"Bronze on Chevron is particularly significant because it marks Gardner Vaughan Group's first development on the Gold Coast following many successful projects across Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast."

[smartcode_project:default project_id=107520 project_image_fid=367183]

Betteridge said the ground breaking is a proud moment for the&nbsp;team and their purchasers, who can now see their future homes beginning to take shape.&nbsp;

"As both developer and builder, we're able to oversee every aspect of the project from design through to construction, ensuring the quality and attention to detail Gardner Vaughan Group has become renowned for."&nbsp;

Designed by acclaimed architectural practice <a href="https://www.apartments.com.au/architects/cottee-parker-architects">Cottee Parker</a>, Bronze on Chevron has been thoughtfully designed to complement Chevron Island's evolving streetscape while embracing its relaxed coastal lifestyle.

The development will offer generous residences with refined interiors, premium finishes and resort-style amenities, with completion anticipated in early 2029.&nbsp;

[smartcode_project_cta:default project_id=107520]

The development will offer generous residences with refined interiors, premium finishes and resort-style amenities, with completion anticipated in early 2029

Gardner Vaughan Group breaks ground on first Gold Coast development, Bronze on Chevron

Interview

<html><body>
Recently Michael Smith and Sonia Sarangi sat down for an in depth conversation with Kerstin Thompson, one of Melbourne’s most highly respected architects, to discuss the built environment, form making and the relentless negotiation required to create excellent architecture.

This continues from the <a href="/news/negotiating-form-qa-with-kerstin-thompson">first part of the interview</a>.

<hr>
Michael Smith: Previously you’ve spoken about your architecture as being a gradient architecture. Is this a conscious benchmark or is it a result of the process?

Kerstin Thompson: I wrote about gradients a long time ago – the thinking came from a classic late 80s training in architecture where all oppositions were being challenged. Anything that was black or white I was always looking for the grey. You think about things on a spectrum rather than one or the other. The article reflected on the kinds of formal outcomes a gradient architecture might offer. I think that idea still permeates through a lot of our projects where the situation presented is not an either or it’s an in-between and you need to formulate a response to that.

In relation to our Deakin School of Architecture and Built Environment / A+B this idea of gradients relates to different kinds of spaces and how they relate to each other. The school’s existing floorplan was highly cellular and comprised of discrete spaces. We shifted this to a more fluid arrangement, rethinking the formal binaries of public vs private spaces, smaller spaces to bigger spaces, intimate space/open space, quiet space/loud space. Exploring the space between these two ends is often an important driver our projects. You offer a range of spaces and it makes available different sorts of positions; people find their preference and make their choices within that.

MS: So it is a deliberate strategy to put that in?

KT: Yes I think it is. It came from when I was teaching in the early 90s at RMIT. I was doing my Masters and I became interested in all the figure grounds we used to do in black and white. I thought about what it might look like if you thought about a grey rather than black or white; what are these confused in-between things? Whether it’s the public/private conundrum of the shopping mall; what is that, that’s not a black or a white. Much later when KTA began working in heritage contexts we found ourselves needing to respond to neighbourhood character but we didn’t want to do this through direct imitation. There’s a way of transforming but also having some continuity with where you are. That’s an in-between. They were early examples in the practice and I think that’s something we’ve tried to build on.

Sonia Sarangi: That is a very rich approach and I can connect to that, but I wonder whether sometimes if that approach takes a bit more convincing. Our human nature is to look at black and white, you are picking the harder route.

KT: True. I remember years ago when we were working on the <a href="http://kerstinthompson.com/index.php?id=24">Upside Down House</a> in Middle Park – that project was exactly that. There was a heritage listing on an existing house on the site but the house was in a very poor state structurally. Even though it had a listing on it the council said a case could be made to pull it down. However, we had to demonstrate that what replaced it would be a better outcome. We spent 2 years proposing various iterations but still had to go to VCAT because we couldn’t get council support. My argument was that while this building didn’t mimic the form of its neighbours, its holistic approach to site was entirely appropriate for the pattern of the neighbourhood. Form isn’t the only key.

<figure><a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png"><img alt="Upside Down House section, Kerstin Thompson Architects" height="180" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" src="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=640&amp;h=180" srcset="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=640&amp;h=180 640w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=1280&amp;h=360 1280w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=150&amp;h=42 150w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=300&amp;h=84 300w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=768&amp;h=216 768w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/upside-down-house-sketch.png?w=1024&amp;h=288 1024w" style="border:none;vertical-align:baseline;height:auto;" width="640"></a>

<figcaption>Upside Down House section, Kerstin Thompson Architects</figcaption></figure>So much heritage discussion then revolved around whether you are either exactly like your neighbours or you’re a juxtaposition attempting to slam dunk the suburb. I explained it would be a subtle building that didn’t look like its neighbours but still had a quietness to it. But they didn’t believe me. Council wondered why would any architect be advocating for that? Well, because we’ve always maintained that a good building doesn’t have to stand out. Anyway, when the project was eventually built it ended up winning the City of Port Phillip’s local design awards for new house.

SS: It is a rich irony that Port Phillip obviously loved the finished building.

KT: They did. The reason they gave for blocking it was: “Kerstin we know you’ll do a reasonable job but this will set a precedent and then we could get bad versions of it.” Point being, I see it as council’s problem to stop the bad versions not the good ones. Anyway, when the jury came they drove past the house twice because they missed it. I said: “See I told you it was low key”.

MS: Do you see your architecture as being particularly Australian, or is this perception a by-product of integrating your architecture so successfully with Australian landscapes?

KT: That’s a really good question. I think we probably understand our work both within a local repertoire and a global one. Yes you have your local reference points and whether that’s contemporary peers or older peers. For example, Boyd and Grounds, Baracco + Wright and all that mob from when I grew up. More recently current peers I’d say NMBW’s interests, some of Michael Markham’s work for example. There are peers I have a great respect for and there are interests common to us. I think there’s the bigger global discipline and you’re always trying to situate your work within that but also draw from it too. There’s also the idea of acting locally with a building. Not so much in the formal sense of what an Australian building looks like but more that it does something to help place-make in its situation, and help reinforce valued aspects of the local condition.

It can also be more explicit than that. For our design for <a href="http://kerstinthompson.com/index.php?id=20">Ivanhoe House</a>, for example, it felt important to draw on the incredible architectural heritage of the suburb. Neighbourhood character is one of the planning requirements but I don’t have a lot of time for that generic contemporary. Instead we looked to Harold Desbrowe Annear as a reference point knowing that he had a body of work in that suburb and also because it fitted with the client’s preference for a slightly arts and crafts type building. We thought let’s look to a local precedent with that being part of what we interpret for the building.

One of the other things I’ve noticed is that a lot of our buildings are very long and low. Sometimes, I think, this has stemmed from a desire to make sense of the vastness of the site. When you don’t have a defined site, you have to use the built form to define the territory. It started with the <a href="http://kerstinthompson.com/index.php?id=27">Lake Connewarre House </a>but you can also see it with <a href="http://kerstinthompson.com/index.php?id=38">Marysville Police Station</a> and <a href="http://kerstinthompson.com/index.php?id=18">Hanging Rock House</a>. It’s where we’ve attenuated the buildings into length to help define the space around it.

It’s almost turning the building into a wall of sorts, and you use that to make it less about a figure and more about trying to harness a territory adjacent to it. Sometimes I think that might be a response to our bigness of horizon, our wideness and our flatness. It’s something I’d like to give a bit more thought to.

MS: You have done a few police station projects. What I find interesting about that building type is that despite the substantial functional requirements and a consistent client, the finished buildings are diverse.

KT: That’s true. I have tried to write a bit about this because it goes back to that question around making an architecture of a situation. The police stations are a nice example of that because the brief is the same. Often people justify built forms through program, whereas if the program is consistent across, say four projects, then what varies the outcome? That’s been really fascinating to wrestle with. That’s where we thought interestingly form was one of those devices. Same program but how we arrange it has a really big impact on how it operates on its site.

With Marysville it gets dragged out. It’s a long building along the edge of a park and that’s because we wanted to create more interface with interiors of the station looking out to the green space rather than just a tiny little shop front and then a long deep plan. By contrast with Warrandyte and Hurstbridge, which were done together, they are both in green belt suburbs in Melbourne. To camouflage them in their landscapes, we took an approach to brick detailing that was friendly and endearing: to reflect the greenness of the communities we used green bricks. With Marysville, we used timber instead. Through formal differences, the arrangement of program, and material choices those buildings fit more appropriately to their situations. The situation is what changes in the brief. The program is the same.

<figure><a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg"><img alt="Marysville Police Station by Kerstin Thompson Architects. (Photo credit: Trevor Mein) " height="437" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" src="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=640&amp;h=437" srcset="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=640&amp;h=437 640w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=1280&amp;h=874 1280w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=150&amp;h=102 150w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=300&amp;h=205 300w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=768&amp;h=524 768w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-police-station.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=699 1024w" style="border:none;vertical-align:baseline;height:auto;" width="640"></a>

<figcaption>Marysville Police Station by Kerstin Thompson Architects. Photo credit: Trevor Mein</figcaption></figure><figure><a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png"><img alt="Marysville Police Station elevation. Kerstin Thompson Architects" height="396" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" src="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png?w=640&amp;h=396" srcset="https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png?w=640&amp;h=396 640w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png?w=150&amp;h=93 150w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png?w=300&amp;h=186 300w, https://theredandblackarchitect.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/marysville-elevation.png 750w" style="border:none;vertical-align:baseline;height:auto;" width="640"></a>

<figcaption>Marysville Police Station elevation. Kerstin Thompson Architects</figcaption></figure>MS: In addition to running a highly successful architecture practice you are also involved in architecture education both here in Melbourne and New Zealand. It seems that for the longest time the mantra of architects looking at the current education system is one of concern that it’s not what it used to be. How do you think our institutions are preparing the next generation of architects? Are they on track or do we need to shake it up?

KT: One thing I touched on earlier is the strange resistance to housing as an agenda for architecture schools. Some academics consider it too difficult, others that it’s got no speculative potential. But I think it’s strange in education for us to be resisting a major and important endeavour. Another issue is the enduring emphasis on the single author project in schools. I would still say that most studios run with about 20 students working in parallel, maybe on the same brief but individually. Something I’ve tried to do in my own teaching programs is set up opportunities for familiarizing students with a much more negotiated practice that I think architecture is and which I think has enormous design opportunity too. Studios where for instance there’s a very high level of interfacing of other student’s work in the outcome.

An example is a studio I did I think it was about 2004 at RMIT, I’ve since run different versions of it. There were 3 different projects. The first was about building a piece of infill. That’s simple interface, you just have to interface your site with the adjoining ones first thing. Then we bumped it up where it was a row housing project and if there was 20 students in the class they each did one of the houses in the row. They had two neighbours, they had a live, contingent interface that could change outside and they had to respond to that. That was the row house. Then the third part was when instead of just having 2 moving edges you had them in every possible interface on the QV site and they all worked out how they would Masterplan and organize the whole site now overlapping and moving through each other.

The point of all of that was to teach an appreciation for non-static context, which I think is in every way what practice is like every day. It’s contingent, you’re constantly getting thrown curve balls, and it’s how you negotiate and manage that and what you can extract out of it. I think that’s how good buildings come about. That’s a very valuable skill to have. The tragedy of architectural culture, and even the recent talk with Darren Anderson covered this, is how students do their final project at school and it’s as if it’s the greatest moment in their thinking and then they get into practice and it’s all depressing and downhill. That’s the exact opposite of what I think an architect should be thinking. I actually think you’ll get out of school and you’ll be so glad to have these real conditions to try and extract good architecture out of. I think it’s teaching an appreciation for the messiness as the potential and if you’ve got the tools to channel that then that’s where good architecture happens. I’d like more of that in education.

SS: I don’t think I ever heard the word negotiation once in my 5 years of education. That’s the sad thing and that’s every day now. That word just never comes up in school.

KT: It’s relentless. All you do is negotiate.

MS: Thank you very much for your time.

This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/negotiating-form-qa-with-kerstin-thompson-part-2/">The Red &amp; Black Architect blog</a>.
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redblackarchitect

Negotiating Form: Q+A with Kerstin Thompson (Part 2)

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Kerstin Thompson is one of Australia’s most respect architects. Her practice Kerstin Thompson Architects was established in 1994 and has delivered architectural excellence across a broad spectrum of project types from education projects, police stations and commercial fit outs, as well as multi-residential and single bespoke homes.

Recently Michael Smith and Sonia Sarangi sat down for an in depth conversation with Kerstin to discuss the built environment, form making and the relentless negotiation required to create excellent architecture.

Michael Smith: As one of Melbourne’s leading architects, how do you evaluate the development of our city? What do you think we’re doing well and where do we need to lift our game?

Kerstin Thompson: I often bang on about how housing matters because most construction activity is housing. If you get housing wrong you’re buggering up your city. In my teaching in Wellington, but also in my practice here, I often lead research around higher density forms of housing.

Recently one of my thesis students did an interim presentation to an academic from Newcastle University on the topic and his comment was “it’s so unusual seeing thesis projects on housing. In Newcastle we think it’s too hard so we don’t encourage students to tackle it.” I thought what a failure not to ask students to think about a substantial part of the city’s formation.

MS: It’s an extraordinary approach.

KT: It is. I’m always surprised that housing is seen as a prosaic topic in universities, that it’s not viewed as a place for innovation and good thinking. I think we’re realizing that Melbourne, despite priding itself on its architectural cultural, is missing the mark in terms of housing quality. This crisis is reflected in the design of minimum standards but it’s 10 years too late. That said, any turnaround is something.

MS: That leads directly into my second question, which is exactly on those draft apartment standards. Are they a good result or a missed opportunity?

KT: They’re a good start. Minimum size always alarms me because I do think there are cases where size is not the determinant of a living space’s quality or public realm benefit. When I brought a group of students over from Wellington earlier this year we went on a housing tour that took in Cairo Apartments – a classic case of where very small spaces can have an incredibly high level of amenity because of their relationship to garden or to outside.

I know that’s a low density version compared to high rise but there are many cases to be made for small that’s well designed and meets a whole lot of other liveability criteria.

What I’m not sure about is how much needs to be discretionary or mandatory. I think you’ve always got to allow for alternatives and exceptions. By way of example, we’re currently doing a project in a suburb in the inner north that’s involved an interesting negotiation around the relationship of the development to a boundary setback.

The local council has been ahead of the curve in developing its own apartment design code. The challenge for us was a section of the code pertaining to varied setbacks depending on a spatial use (bedroom, living room) and the height of the building (how many storeys). Essentially if you had blank walls and relied on borrowed light from other rooms it was a lot easier to meet the code than incorporating windows and having to adjust your setback.

It was a classic case where you know potential quality is being lost if the code is followed. We thought it was more generous to have a 3-metre setback because every apartment in the scheme has a double aspect and maximum cross flow ventilation. That was a fundamental principle that directed all of the massing across the site. We weren’t reliant on this rear setback, it’s only secondary, but we know it’s better for those apartments and we also think it had some benefits for the future development of the adjoining side.

Council has obviously adopted the code for a reason but then you begin to see its unintended consequences. So begins a larger discussion around discretionary aspects and being able to espouse the merits of an alternative. That’s probably one of our big hurdles, that a level of expertise and resourcing is required within council to review individual designs. You can see why it doesn’t happen, but it’s only through challenging these codes that we find new ways of doing things.

We had a case, again I’m trying to be concrete, a few years ago with a site in Fitzroy which has a 2-storey heritage base. We felt that if we put the new building in line above that the development – compared to the usual wedding cake setbacks – would be more appropriate to the morphology of Fitzroy. Also, that a perimeter block development provided better internal amenity for the development because you could do dual aspect. Even though it defied all the usual heritage defaults of setbacks from the historic façade, we pushed really hard and eventually got council support.

So it becomes a question of constantly challenging the default and approaching projects from first principles, which sometimes means high risk because you are saying to your client I actually think questioning this will get a better outcome but it’s a less predictable process that we might have to go through. That’s the scary part because it’s on your head if it doesn’t work.

MS: So to summarize your position, the apartment standards are good but they can’t be definitive. We need to have people who understand the issues to be able to provide exceptions to the rules, where appropriate.

KT: That’s right, and the intelligence to recognize when a diversion from a default is a much better outcome. How you would measure a better outcome is you would always assess it within the development, but around the development too.

“Housing always has to have a level of mutual benefit for its situation.”

That’s another little test you apply. Yes it’s good for the development but as long as it’s not jeopardizing or offsetting a problem from your site onto someone else’s site.

MS: One of the biggest changes globally that we have seen in the last few years in architecture is the rise of parametric design. Do you see this as a style in itself similar to say art deco, or is it more simply a tool that some architects will use to explore complex forms?

KT: I think it’s really interesting. Recently I went to the talk at the Boyd Foundation by Darren Anderson, who wrote the book Imaginary Cities. His talk was about future visions and they necessarily tell you more about the present out of which they came. Also that future visions tend towards this idea of tabula rasa.

That they’re often presented without any understanding or concession to the existing layer of stuff that will be there. They’re strangely outside of time. Anyway, the point in relation to your question was he showed many future visions for Melbourne and he dug up all of these extraordinary schemes. Some of which I’d seen before but others were really new to me.

One of them was from the 70s that was a scheme done on the Jolimont Railway.

Sonia Sarangi: Yes, those are some really crazy schemes.

KT: The wildest form making. Except for the fact that it was rendered through hand, it was a hand drawing. It looked like the sorts of projects I’ve seen recently coming out of RMIT’s parametric studios. I found it fascinating. Partly because there were these direct formal parallels using an old technology and a new technology.

It’s interesting in that it tells you it’s not necessarily the tool that’s determining the forms. He also showed Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower and you see this formal interest from early in the 20th century through to this one in the 70s in Melbourne. It’s interesting where there’s a formal intent and you just pick your tool to get to that.

The extent to which the tool can enable a new formal intent, that is something I’ve seen in the more innovative parametric studies, and again at RMIT, the thesis work there with Roland Snooks and his students. I think the possibility of these self-proliferating formal processes is really interesting. Revit, for example, which is more for the purposes of documentation and procurement benefits is not necessarily for a formal end. Why is that? Possibly because formally it doesn’t help our language or our architecture.

I will say that a long, long time ago, ’97 when we did an early project for RMIT, it was a technology estate project. It was a twisted form we were attempting to develop, which was to do with solar orientation on this curve site, et cetera. I remember having to go and find one of my old students to help me model it because with my auto CAD skills it was never going to happen.

That was a nice moment where I completely understood this need for another tool to generate a 3D model.

SS: Do you ever worry that it might plant the seed for a certain kind of … I don’t want to use the world laziness.

KT: Absolutely. But it’s a complex one because on the one hand a lot of discussion in architecture is not necessarily to do with form making, and I do think that there are high risks when it’s the number 1 priority because it can result in an excess and wilfulness that I associate with problematic buildings. I know that on the one hand we fight form as a key driver or manifestation of architectural thinking.

On the other I also realize that if we think of what we do as architects it is about making a physical space out of matter, and inevitably that is a creation of form.

I also recognize that some of our buildings have been identified for a clarity of form making. It’s not that they’re anti-form either, which I know some people will try to argue. I still think we always have this problem with form, but it is that extent to which it is a square peg/round hole problem. I think that’s when I question it, and how you find a form. I tried to describe this in a recent talk on ethics at the Robin Boyd Foundation in relation to the idea of accommodation.

To accommodate sounds like whatever comes in as a force within the making of a project you just take on board unquestioningly. It’s not saying that. It’s saying that all projects have various forces on them and our job, I think, is to accommodate those but through an intent of sorts.

You are still doing something with these forces that is directed somehow. It’s not just whatever. I think that’s where bad architecture has an intent that is divorced from the forces it has to navigate and it just has determination to apply those regardless of whether it’s the right thing or not. That was partly where I was getting into an ethics of architecture that you have to wrestle with these considerations, it’s our duty to do that.

Also for a disciplinary contribution you’re trying to wrestle and doing something with those that achieves something of integrity especially.

Continued in the <a href="/news/negotiating-form-qa-with-kerstin-thompson-part-2">second part of this interview</a>.

This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/negotiating-form-qa-with-kerstin-thompson-part-1/">The Red &amp; Architect Blog</a>.
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Negotiating Form: Q+A with Kerstin Thompson

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Melbourne based developer Goldfields has recently launched two premium apartment developments: Patch and 525 High Street..

Located at 243 Queens Parade in Fitzroy North, Patch is a 12-storey building comprises 83 one, two and three-bedroom apartments, a communal terrace on level eight and ground floor retail space. The communal terrace on level eight, includes a 300sqm tree-dotted deck, indoor and outdoor dining facilities, and a communal kitchen/cooking area with views towards the CBD.

525 High Street is a 7-storey building comprising 44 one, two and three-bedroom apartments and two Townhouses designed by JCB Architects, with interiors by Hecker Guthrie. The development is located within Prahran East Village, and has earmarked an independent organic grocer to occupy the ground floor retail space.

After almost a decade as one of the founding partners of Asset1 which has been involved in a range of developments, Marco Gattino created Goldfields during 2010. The move came about from Gattino's desire to establish his own business with a strong focus on developing premium residential projects.

Urban.com.au recently spoke with Goldfields’ Managing Director Marco Gattino regarding the progress and interest in the company's two current projects.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/patch.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Patch, Queens Parade. Image courtesy of Fieldworks"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="725" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/patch.jpg?itok=zYjSo6R0" title="Patch, Queens Parade. Image courtesy of Fieldworks" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Patch, Queens Parade. Image courtesy of Fieldwork</figcaption></figure>Urban.com.au: Goldfields acquired Patch from previous owner Wulff Projects selling the site with a permit in place. What attracted you to that particular site and project?

Marco Gattino: One of the attractions for us was to acquire the site on the basis that it had a permit. We made a few adjustments and enhancements to the permitted scheme but certainly having a permit in place allowed us to get traction quite quickly in terms of launching the project. It's fair to say most of the planning risk was taken out of the process and we were overall quite happy with the design of the building and retaining Fieldwork as the architects, who apart from producing the original design, we feel are a good local firm (and were) based in Clifton Hill.

They understand the demographic, they understand the area and I believe they've done a very good job of delivering a very design-focused project that is in keeping with what the area demands.

UM: In addition to the permit for the site, did you identify North Fitzroy as an area with a great deal of investment potential and opportunity?

MG: The whole North Fitzroy/Clifton Hill area was very attractive to us because of its transport linkages, with Patch well-serviced by tram, but also within walking distance of Rushall and Clifton Hill stations. If you look at the local demographics, a quarter of the population in Fitzroy is aged between 25 and 34.

Public transport becomes very important to that demographic. as is itsproximity to the city.

UM: Is it fair to say there's still a degree of resistance to higher density development in areas such as Fitzroy North and Clifton Hill, and did this factor into your decision to acquire the site with a permit already in place?

MG: No doubt. A developer would always welcome a site that has town planning approval in place, for those reasons. Patch sits within a location that's essentially an island site made up of multiple properties.

So Patch is just one part of a larger regeneration of that particular area along Queens Parade, where there will be higher densities which I think will end up creating its own brand and positioning within the market place. I believe over time, as the area evolves, it will be a go to destination and a desirable place for people looking to live in North Fitzroy.

We're one of the first developments to kick off in the area and anyone that buys into Patch is part of a greater, grander evolution of that particular area of North Fitzroy, and that will ultimately help enhance capital values.

UM: When did you go to market with Patch and how have sales progressing thus far? And when are you hoping to commence construction?

MG: At launch weekend we achieved close to 30% in sales and that was just over three weeks ago, and we are now sitting at just a tick over 40%. We had our initial run where it was well promoted and well positioned and now the sales are ticking along. With that in mind we're looking at commencing construction in February next year, with a 14 month build.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/image30_10.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="525 High Street. Image courtesy of Goldfields"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="347" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/image30_10.jpg?itok=Yiyb462W" title="525 High Street. Image courtesy of Goldfields" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>525 High Street. Image courtesy of Goldfields</figcaption></figure>UM: Moving onto 525 High Street in Prahran, Goldfieds has engaged another quality multi-residential architect in Jackson Clements Burrows. Can you talk a bit about that?

MG: What happened there Laurence is we identified the site over a year ago, and we quickly realised that it was a trophy site that most of the significant players in this space had kept their eyes. We were fortunate enough to acquire the site and so we knew we had to do the site justice which immediately meant using top grade consultants.

So if you think about the demographic and the fact we've been overwhelmed with owner-occupier demand, the spec had to be right. Interiors had to be designed right so Hecker Guthrie came to mind very quickly, as did JCB because we knew the building had to be striking and commensurate to the area.

It's going to be one of the few larger scale 7-storey buildings in that location. We had to do it justice and I believe JCB have done the site justice, so this to us is one of our most exciting built form projects.

One of the challenges with the site was dealing with... there are two real faces to the building being to the north and the south. The northern face is a unique opportunity so far as it's an elevated site which sits above a heritage protected area, so we're talking about unencumbered views to the north and for those who want to be part of the vibrant activity there's the southern face.

But being able to have those views over Prahran and South Yarra towards the city really makes it 525 High unique.

UM: With the shift in the market towards more owner-occupier stock it would seem that projects such as Patch and 525 have been quick to respond to that shift?

MG: I think Patch appeals to both: it offers something for the investor, but also the owner occupier.

Whilst 525 may attract the odd investor it has been primarily set up, positioned and priced for the owner occupier, and it is the perfect location for those living in a home in Armadale, Toorak and Malvern. They're still close to the areas they're familiar with but at the same time 525 High gives them the opportunity to live in something fresh for the next phase of their life.

UM: So is 525 High primarily targeted at downsizers and empty nesters?

MG: Correct. We all know the amount of equity that a lot of these empty nesters now have in their home and the ability to trade down in terms of value, but still live in something they're proud to call home while at the same time generating a cash surpluses.

UM: It is widely reported in the media that there is an oversupply of apartments in the market, but it would appear that there is still very much an appetite for owner occupier product. As a result the quality of the apartment buildings and the apartments themselves seems to have improved from where they were even a couple of years ago. Would that be a fair assessment?

MG: I would say so. The bar is constantly being raised and we are all pushing each other in terms of our outputs to the market, so the level of quality naturally goes up. Equally as important, buyers are becoming a lot more discerning, so in order to achieve the sales rates required to make the projects feasible, you need to deliver certain outcomes.

In response to the notion of "are we in a bubble?" and "is there an oversupply?" there's never an oversupply of well located, well designed and well executed product and that's what 525 High is.

525 High was launched a week ago (at time of interview) and is already 50% sold which is an overwhelming response. In particular there has been huge demand for three bedroom apartments so we've very well placed and very satisfied with the sales, which have exceeded our own expectations even though we knew the site would attract a lot of interest.

We look forward to commencing works early next year.
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Laurence Dragomir

Goldfields looks to strike gold with two marquee projects

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Lendlease's Melbourne Quarter development, located within the Batman's Hill precinct of Melbourne's Docklands is aspiring to be a sustainable new city neighbourhood that will cater for 3,000 future residents in approximately 1,690 dwellings across three towers.

The three residential towers have been designed by Melbourne architectural firm Fender Katsalidis Architects. The first residential building, known as East Tower, will feature a wide variety of one, two and three bedroom apartments and is currently at sales. Located at 628 Flinders Street, the 40-storey development will offer views of the city and bay and will feature hanging gardens climbing the full height of the building.

The precinct has been designed with a strong environmental focus, with more than half of the 2.5 hectare site dedicated to open public spaces including Melbourne’s first elevated Skypark, a neighbourhood park, a new public square and a series of retail laneways which upon completion will connect to the existing CBD.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/aerial_view_0.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Melbourne Quarter aerial view. Image courtesy of Lendlease"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="387" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/aerial_view_0.jpg?itok=IoIa2LQB" title="Melbourne Quarter aerial view. Image courtesy of Lendlease" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Melbourne Quarter aerial view. Image courtesy of Lendlease</figcaption></figure><blockquote>
Melbourne Quarter, with its residential neighbourhood next to a thriving commercial district, offers the opportunity to live next to work, which is increasingly appealing for young professional owner occupiers and investors with a keen eye on the leasing market.
Lendlease prides itself on the high quality of its apartment designs. Melbourne Quarter’s competitively priced apartments will provide a range of one, two and three bedroom city residences, with added value in their design features, location and amenity compared to what our CBD competitors are offering. We are already receiving strong market interest for Melbourne Quarter’s East Tower.
Melbourne Quarter aspires to set leading standards as an environmentally sensitive and sustainable development, that will see all residential towers target a 5-Star Green Star rating.
<cite>Mark Menhinnitt, Managing Director for Urban Regeneration, Lendlease</cite>
</blockquote>

Apartments.com.au recently spoke to Ben Christie, Lendlease's Head of Apartments, about the residential component of the project and how Lendlease are seeking to distinguish their product in an overcrowded market.

Apartments.com.au: Could you outline the smart technologies that are being implemented across the residential towers?

Ben Christie: The ability to connect our residents to the wider community is something we've been looking to introduce and they'll able to do that via an app. It'll be a project specific app that can be accessed via an iPad or iPhone and allow residents to book the extensive communal facilities which that are in the buildings which comprise 'Club MQ'. With 'Club MQ' we're looking at setting a new benchmark with the level of amenity that we're providing and this will be available in the first tower and then the two other towers will share from that.

UM: Is the provision of a concierge/hotel style facilities designed to attract more owner-occupiers rather than investors?

BC: They tend to attract both, in my experience. Certainly we've seen a growing market for time-poor professionals that want to live in the city or close to the city and the services that our concierge will provide, will help those time poor professionals, who live busy lives with the things they need to do. Additionally it will also assist families, which are a growing demographic in apartments who are also time poor, trying to spend extra time with each other so they'll probably use services for ordering food, collecting mail, having laundry picked up and so on.

We think these buildings will attract young professionals and families, with a greater number likely to be young professionals and time-poor executives but it will also be attractive to investors because the concierge service will assist in achieving premium rentals as tenants so our assumption is that it will be attractive to tenants as well, which makes it attractive to investors.

UM: It could be argued that many other more recent residential developments employ a concierge and smart technology. What makes Melbourne Quarter different?

BC: I think what you're touching on there is right and concierge services aren't a new phenomenon. The difference here at Melbourne Quarter is the level of service that we'll be providing and the level of amenity we'll be providing at 'Club MQ' as part of the project. Customers, tenants and purchasers alike are becoming far more discerning and are demanding more of their buildings and more from the services the buildings provide, so our point of difference is that rather than just a standard concierge service we're providing a luxury concierge service in very much a hotel-style offering.

The concierge you might see historically in buildings don't go to the full extent that we feel our customers now seek. The added benefit of the service is that it acts a security service as well: we'll have two full time concierges on-site, 7 days a week.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/view04_mq_squre_elevated_v2.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Melbourne Quarter neighbourhood square. Image courtesy Lend Lease"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="363" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/view04_mq_squre_elevated_v2.jpg?itok=MNdNJAQk" title="Melbourne Quarter neighbourhood square. Image courtesy Lend Lease" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Melbourne Quarter Neighbourhood Park. Image courtesy Lendlease</figcaption></figure>UM: What is the anticipated construction commencement for East Tower? Will the delivery of Melbourne Quarter be staged or will a common podium for the project be delivered in one hit? Is there a nominal completion date for the whole project?

BC: We're starting with Arup's tenancy as we have a commitment there but Lendlease being a mixed-use developer, we have the ability to deliver these buildings simultaneously. We have only recently received planning approval for the residential buildings but we've had a lot of strong activity in our sales process and it's been very encouraging from the market, from both investors and owner occupiers but we haven't finalised a date for the commencement of the residential towers as yet. At this stage we have a conservative completion of 2022 or around 6 years of construction, but we'd like to and are aiming to deliver it faster.

We at Lendlease have significant experience in large-scale urban regeneration projects and so we can deliver commercial, residential and retail infrastructure simultaneously and our staging plan will be such that it will be very customer focused to engage people at the ground plane both within the commercial and residential components. And that is one of the important factors when delivering these types of complex projects. Each neighbourhood could be built independently of one another but they won't be. The team have received a lot of interest from prospective tenants for the commercial buildings and the feedback thus far has been positive.

Laurence, it is interesting when you ask about the decoupling of residential to commercial. Certainly, the residential buildings are focused somewhat to Flinders Street and the commercial buildings are somewhat focused to Collins Street and then we have an extensive laneway with a lot of retail offering which links the two, so they are intertwined.

One of the reasons, I'd like to add is that Melbourne Quarter will be home to 3,000 residents when it's complete and a lot of those residents could easily be people that work at Melbourne Quarter as well. With a lot of our mixed-use projects around the world we find that people like to live near where they work so often we attract young professionals that work at Arup or any other tenant we might secure who also live in one of the residential buildings.

It provides a very efficient lifestyle, it works for the investors, it works for the tenants. Imagine you were working at Arup, you're going home to your apartment in Melbourne Quarter and you can order your dinner when you leave the office and it's there when you get home. There's some great things you could do with our concierge service.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/view14_flinders_entrance_lobby_final.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Flinders Street entrance lobby. Image courtesy Lend Lease"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="331" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/view14_flinders_entrance_lobby_final.jpg?itok=vfkDGSRW" title="Flinders Street entrance lobby. Image courtesy Lend Lease" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Flinders Street entrance lobby. Image courtesy Lendlease</figcaption></figure><h2>Club MQ</h2>

Lendlease has provided Apartments.com.au with a summary of the facilities available to all residents as part of Club MQ, including:

<ul>
<li>Hotel-style grand arrival entrance to Club MQ (off Flinders Street), with undercover drop-off and concierge service.</li>
	<li>Secondary pedestrian lobby to the Club MQ and apartments off the precinct Neighbourhood Park (access via the new laneway connecting Collins and Flinders Streets).</li>
	<li>Swimming Pool (25 metres in length).</li>
	<li>Spa and change room amenity.</li>
	<li>Steam room.</li>
	<li>Sauna facilities.</li>
	<li>All-purpose gym.</li>
	<li>Multipurpose function/yoga room.</li>
	<li>Residents library and lounge.</li>
	<li>Theatrette for 20 people.</li>
	<li>Three internal private dining areas featuring outdoor terraces and BBQ amenity.</li>
	<li>Access to other precinct amenities includes Melbourne Quarter’s Skypark, Melbourne Square, Neighbourhood Park and a diverse retail offering within the Melbourne Quarter precinct.</li>
</ul>
<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/club_mq_gym.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Club MQ facilities. Image courtesy Lend Lease"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="484" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/club_mq_gym.jpg?itok=RquEx_kJ" title="Club MQ facilities. Image courtesy Lend Lease" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Club MQ facilities. Image courtesy Lendlease</figcaption></figure>While the residential component is at sales and marketing, Lendlease aren't wasting anytime getting on with the rest of the development. Arup's 3-storey office tenancy within the One Melbourne Quarter building is currently under construction, delivering a new sky park above Collins Street with a second 27-storey commercial building at 681-701 Collins Street, recently submitted for planning consideration with an end value of $550 million.

The delivery of the $2 billion Melbourne Quarter project is anticipated to generate approximately 15,000 construction jobs over the life of the project. On completion, its commercial offices are expected to be home to around 10,000 workers.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/view_27_skyrooms_from_collins_st.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="The 27-storey office tower at 681-701 Collins Street. Image courtesy Lendlease"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="1137" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/view_27_skyrooms_from_collins_st.jpg?itok=PjgOfqLb" title="The 27-storey office tower at 681-701 Collins Street. Image courtesy Lendlease" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Melbourne Quarter Tower from Collins Street. Image courtesy Lendlease</figcaption></figure>
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Lendlease forges ahead with Melbourne Quarter

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In light of Michael Banak's recent appointment to the role of Principal at national design firm <a href="/architects/rothelowman">RotheLowman</a>, Apartments.com.au thought it an opportune time to chat with the Michael given his extensive credentials in sustainable workplace design.

Holding a membership with the Green Building Council of Australia and accreditation as a Green Star professional, Michael Banak also participated in the Australian Institute of Architects’ mentoring program. Partnering with fellow Principal Ben Pomroy, the duo will spearhead RotheLowman's expansion into the commercial office sphere with a view toward technologically intelligent and sustainable workplace solutions.

Encompassing topics such as RotheLowman's current commercial-driven workbook, evolving expectations and emerging sustainability trends, the chat transpired as follows.

Apartments.com.au: How many current commercial projects are in design on a national scale. Is commercial design a growing sector within RotheLowman?

Michael Banak: RotheLowman is currently working on 14 wide-ranging commercial projects from large-scale office to boutique and mixed-use commercial outcomes. These projects are at varying stages from concept design through to construction across our three national offices.

Our collaborative architecture and interior design teams are specialists at embedding organisational culture into our architectural solutions and as a result it’s a sector that’s expanded in our business. My recent appointment combined with the existing knowledge of our established commercial team has allowed us to provide an increased offering specialising in business spaces.

UM: RotheLowman is particularly strong in residential design in Melbourne. Are there any commercial projects in Melbourne on the radar?

MB: We are also working on a major office development in <a href="/new-apartments/south-melbourne-vic-3205">South Melbourne</a> pending town planning. This project will showcase the firm’s commercial knowledge through an innovative design featuring flexible and efficient office space; green roofs and break-out terraces; atrium spaces with communication stairs that frame key city views; and cutting edge mechanical and lifting systems.

<a href="/new-apartments/richmond-vic-3121">Richmond</a>-based <a href="/developments/burnley-vic-3121">East Edge Botanicca</a> is in planning; cutting-edge strata offices settled amidst the beauty of the Yarra River designed to elicit the professionalism of a tightly held corporate hub. Offices and communal spaces transition the outdoors in using light interplay and generous balconies, while sleek finishes, restrained warehouse-inspired design and communal green hubs facilitate professional interaction.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/image17_6.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="East Edge Botanicca. Image: ROTHELOWMAN"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="245" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/image17_6.jpg?itok=QZ6l8Ntk" title="East Edge Botanicca. Image: ROTHELOWMAN" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>East Edge Botanicca. Image: RotheLowman</figcaption></figure>We have recently completed a refurbishment of the RPM Real Estate Group headquarters for a company that has experienced a 370 per cent increase in revenue over the last four years, and has sold 25 per cent of all residential lots available across Melbourne’s metropolitan growth areas over the 2014/2015 period.

The design reflects the people-oriented, sophisticated and approachable nature of the RPM business in a unified manner that overcomes the physically divided office and high proportion of dispersed workers.

UM: Advancing technology has become more prevalent in commercial design. What are the current prevailing technologies influencing green building design?

MB: New technologies I’ve observed in green office buildings, firstly, include connectivity. Ease of communication between workers provides efficiency and therefore reduced use of environmental resources. These technologies allow greater user control of their environments.

The user for example can dial into the office before or after work and control lighting, heating and sound, this can be set to change for different times of the day, moods or seasons. Other technologies that I’ve begun to see regularly integrated include low emittance windows and smart glass; cool roofs and photovoltaic (solar) cell technology that can be used as a thin film applied to glass.

UM: Net Zero commercial buildings. Are they viable, should or will they become the norm via legislation? Is the onus on the architect or the developer to create such an outcome?

MB: Net zero buildings are grid-integrated buildings capable of generating as much energy as they consume through advanced technologies and on-site power generation. This includes power generated from the sun, wind or earth to exceed demands of the building.

To meet our energy reduction targets this type of development is inevitable. It needs to be legislated and supported by government to be successful, in the same way Green Star was supported in the early days by government for all government commercial projects. This paved the way for Green Star rated commercial buildings to be the norm.

It is the architect’s responsibility to promote net zero buildings, to protect the environment and provide a business case to the developer to support this. Generally, a developer will only entertain this idea if they are looking for a long-term investment.

UM: You are a Green Star accredited professional and a member of the Green Building Council of Australia. What benchmarks in design are required to fulfill the requirements as outlined by the two bodies, and are these requirements often changing to meet evolving expectations/benchmarks?

MB: The Green Star accreditation requires further education – I undertook a course and spent six months studying to pass the exam. I ensure that I undertake Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements each year to maintain my accreditation and stay up to date with current trends.

The CPD requirements for the accreditation cover a range of areas including Green Star sustainable developments, rating tools, case studies and innovation. Memberships to the GBCA also provide access to events and resources to ensure that my practice continues to lead and innovate.

UM: How have workplace interiors changes to suit evolving tenant needs/requirements and how do you think they will further evolve into the future?

MB: The emergence of remote working has widespread implications for the traditional commercial office. Technology allowing us to work less at our desks has increased our office mobility, reducing the space required for a typical office.

Architects are now able to design non-designated office space where a mobile workforce can plug in on their days in the office. The trend towards hot-desking has been refined through trial and error – a scaled, team-based version of hot-desking is now most common in project-based commercial offices, rather than an all-encompassing model.

The reduction in use of paper has also meant less storage is required and therefore spaces can exist with a smaller footprint. Activity based work settings are popular at the moment, and I envision in the future that workplaces will incorporate greater control for workers, enabling them to dictate the ambient conditions of their workplace instantly, wherever they choose to be.
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silvermb

Sustainability in the commercial sphere: RotheLowman's Michael Banak talks to Urban.com.au

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Michel Masson is the CEO of Infrastructure Victoria, the government body charged with formulating a 30 year strategy for Victoria’s infrastructure. This is the second part of the two part Red+Black Architect interview.

If you missed part 1, click <a href="/news/red-black-interviews-the-ceo-of-infrastructure-victoria-part-1">here</a>.

Red+Black Architect – While selecting the right piece of infrastructure to build at the right time is critical, it’s equally critical to the liveability of the state to ensure that the design quality of the proposed infrastructure is of a very high standard? How is Infrastructure Victoria addressing this complex issue of the design quality?

Michel Masson – Let’s be clear as to what Infrastructure Victoria stands for. We are responsible for the strategic planning only. We’re not touching on the procurement. We’re not touching on the delivery. Clearly, we’re not here to revisit designs and look at those when we identify projects. That’s at a later stage. Having said that, we do acknowledge the importance of design in getting the right outcome. We are very focused on being outcome oriented, rather than focused on an output.

With that in mind, we’ve looked at a couple of ideas that are about improving design standards.

We are looking at universal design principles to provide accessibility for people with mobility challenges, and how we can push that further.  We’ve looked also at active design as a way to promote more active lifestyles using infrastructure, such as putting cycling and pedestrian pathways into new developments.

We’re looking at design in relation to social housing.  We’re also looking at design around cyber security. Infrastructure will have more and more technology embedded into it so that needs to be taken into account.

R+BA – Have you been consulting with the Office of the Victorian Government Architect on how to achieve design quality in the process of delivering infrastructure?

MM – You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve had already exchanges with Victorian Government Architect Jill Garner in order to have exactly that discussion. We’ve highlighted a couple of areas where indeed our role and their involvement into the strategy could actually be reinforced to ensure design is considered.

R+BA – From the projects that made it into the options paper, are there any that you found particularly surprising either in perhaps because they initially sounded far-fetched but have since shown promise or perhaps a project that was assumed to be a very important part that actually is not particularly viable?

MM – It won’t come as a surprise that when you table 236 options in a very agnostic way, of course, some catch the attention of the public more than some others. Infrastructure Victoria is an evidence-based organisation. We are totally agnostic. We tabled those and we’re very interested to get the feedback from the public.

Of course, when the public cast their eyes on recycling water for drinking purposes, or the mobile police stations for instance, this is very good news for us because we certainly don’t want to shy away from controversial ideas.

Our process is not a popularity contest. We clearly want to engage with the community and say, “We’re here to plan for the next 30 years. Clearly the next 30 years won’t be anything like the past 30 years. Let’s think outside of the box.”

Business-as-usual won’t cut it when it comes to planning for the next 30 years when you’ve got so many new people coming and settling in Melbourne and you’ve got technology changing so rapidly. We need to think differently when it comes to water, when it comes to education, when it comes to transport. Of course, there are some far-fetched ideas but we’re talking about the future so let’s unleash our imaginations and also look at what worked in the rest of the world.

R+BA – How does Infrastructure Victoria assess projects that cross state borders, for example, the high-speed rail on the Eastern Seaboard?

MM – There is a close collaboration between Infrastructure Australia, Building Queensland, Infrastructure New South Wales, Infrastructure Victoria and Infrastructure Tasmania.

We meet on a regular basis in order to exchange information on who is working on what. We’re not here to reinvent the wheel in our silos, far from it. The more we collaborate, the more we share what we are working on, the better we cross-pollinate our ideas.

Of course, in the process of exchanging ideas and cross-pollinating, we discuss national projects like high-speed rail or inland rail in order to confirm our thinking and come up with a consistent approach.

R+BA – With the way technology is advancing rapidly, is the 30-year goal a realistic goal or will it be virtually obsolete within a decade? How do you deal with that rapidly changing technology?

MM – I think that the beauty of having a 30-year plan is that it’s sufficiently far off in order to be able to make some good assumptions as to how we see the future. Clearly we don’t have a crystal ball. Ten years ago, nobody knew that we would have these mobile phones in our pockets and how much it would revolutionise our lives.

Having said that just because we haven’t got a crystal ball doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan. This is the whole essence of planning.

It is important to keep in mind that we’re going to refresh our strategy every 3-5 years. This is not a one-off exercise and then we’ve got to live with it. If that were the case, you would be absolutely right, it would be a pointless exercise.

Two things to keep in mind: one, we’re very mindful that technological advances will make a big impact in how we build, how we operate and how we maintain infrastructure. That’s why we got technology at the forefront what we are looking at. We’ve secured the help of the former chief innovation officer from Google to help us think about the “known unknowns” but also the “unknown unknowns”.

We also need to be very clear in identifying what are the potential disruptors that we need to monitor the impact of. It’s very clear that we can already see the impact of big data and the internet on things. We can see how sensors are already revolutionising water use, for instance, or the energy sector.

I’ll finish off by saying that the last big elephant in the room that we are working on in terms of modernisation is driverless cars. Is this a blessing or is this a curse? What are the changes of the paradigm that we should be looking at in order to leverage upon this and all of the implications that this will have.

R+BA – Yes. It’s very hard to get your head around exactly how that will play out. It could go two ways, in terms of rapidly increasing the amount of cars on the roads because we’ve got all of these cars driving themselves and running errands for people or perhaps it could reduce the numbers of cars, particularly households currently with two cars.

MM – Even if you’ve got less cars overall, you will have more kilometres being driven. It comes back to that question of what is the outcome we want to achieve. Driverless cars also cast a light also on the concept of ownership. With driverless cars, if we stick to the concept of ownership of a car, it will bring different outcomes than if we look at the driverless cars in a new paradigm of non-ownership.

R+BA – Barcelona recently wired a lot of their streets to prepare themselves for an innovation of these driverless cars. Is that something that’s in the draft options report, the idea of WiFi on the street everywhere, facilitating that sort of future outcome?

MM – We certainly are in the process of identifying what are the technology changes that we need to facilitate in order to enable the driverless cars to flourish in the future.

What do we need to start looking at in order to ensure that Victoria is ready for what is to come. It’s not a question of if that’s going to come. It’s a question of how fast and how prepared we are. A lot has got to do with policies and regulations currently in place that need to be looked at in order to ensure that Victoria is ready for it.

R+BA – Absolutely. I can imagine the law would be one of the areas that would need to change, who’s responsible for accidents and so forth.

Are there any aspects of Infrastructure Victoria’s work that have been overlooked or under reported in the media … Is there a message that you would like to put out there that sometimes gets lost amongst the East West Link and other controversial topics?

MM – Well, one of the key characteristics of the 30-year strategy is to cover the whole state, meaning that regional Victoria is equally as important as metropolitan Melbourne. We are very eager to have regional Victorians express their views throughout the consultation so that we are sure that what we table to Parliament reflects their views and their contribution, not just what is best for Melbourne.

The other thing which has probably been overlooked is our guiding principle of land use planning being integrated with the infrastructure planning. We’re very keen to look at ways of bridging that gap. Of course, we are working in close collaboration with the Melbourne Planning Authority. The refreshed Plan Melbourne will be an input into our strategy together with the regional growth plans. Looking at the next 30 years, I think one of the most fundamental changes that we can bring is better integration between infrastructure and land use planning.

The last thing that I’ll say is that we are very ambitious in the final strategy we plan to table at year end, because strategy without execution is nothing. We’re very keen to not only provide a pipeline of strategic recommendations, but for the final strategy to be workable. It needs to be an input to the community, to business, to the local and state governments.

We’re very keen to identify in parallel to our strategic recommendations, what are the tactical next steps? What is the first actionable item that we should be starting to do in order to see a recommendation being implemented?

It may be as an example that we plan for significant capital expenditure, say for a road for instance in 10 or 15 years. Even though you won’t need to build it for 10 or 15 years, we would recommend to pass the relevant legislation in the first 18 months to preserve the corridors. That I think will reposition the true essence of planning into the state of Victoria.

R+BA – Thank you very much for your time

Michael Smith is a director of Atelier Red + Black.  This article was originally published on the Red + Black architect <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/redblack-interview-with-michel-masson-ceo-of-infrastructure-victoria-part-2/">blog</a>.
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Red & Black interviews the CEO of Infrastructure Victoria - Part 2

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Ever since the East West Link fiasco there has been substantial talk about removing the politics from Victoria’s infrastructure planning. The perception has been that politicians choose infrastructure projects that best suit their political agenda, rather than the projects that meet the objectives of a broader plan for a city. One only needs to read the East West Link report from the <a href="https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/approval-and-administration-commonwealth-funding-east-west-link-project" target="_blank">Australian National Audit Office</a> to see how politics can interfere with due process in infrastructure delivery.

Infrastructure Victoria is the body created by the Daniel Andrews led State Government to fix this problem. Recently the CEO of Infrastructure Victoria, Michel Masson, took time out of his busy schedule to discuss the complex task of preparing an evidence based infrastructure strategy for Victoria.

Red+Black Architect – Currently Infrastructure Victoria is working through a process to develop a 30-year strategy. Where is this process currently at and when can we expect the draft strategy to be released?

Michel Masson – 2016 is clearly the year of the development of the 30-year strategy which will be tabled to parliament at year end. Where are we at? The method we took is one of common sense.

First, we decided to look at what are the problems that we’re trying to solve instead of looking at the solutions. There are so many engineering solutions out there looking desperately for a problem to solve in order to justify their existence and request for funding.

This first round of consultation – which focused on our discussion paper Laying the foundations –  was where we asked the community what are the infrastructure challenges we should focus on.

We know all throughout the process we’re going to have to make some pretty tough decisions in terms of what we do and what we don’t. This is strategy 101. You decide what you’re going to do, and equally what you will not be doing.

We were very pleased with the level of engagement we received from the community during that round of consultation. We received a lot of very good feedback about the importance of putting regional Victoria front and centre in the strategy.

We also received feedback about the need to promote integration between the land use planning and the infrastructure planning, which we’ve now incorporated into our guiding principles.

We have just finished the second phase of the consultation surrounding the options paper. Once we defined the strategy framework and the problems we’re going to focus on, we looked at the options. We’ve tabled to the community over 200 ideas to address Victoria’s infrastructure needs. At this stage, the whole process is to get constructive feedback and criticism from the community on the options we’ve put forward and also source new ideas from stakeholders and from the community.

We are in the process of putting all of these pieces of the puzzle together which will form the draft strategy to be released later this year. That will form the basis for a final round of consultation, again asking  the community to review our draft recommendations and tell us:  “Do we agree that this is the pipeline that we’ll want in the short, medium, and long-term?”

Once we’ve incorporated that next round of consultation, then we’ll table the final strategy to parliament at the end of the year. Once that strategy is tabled to Parliament, the government has 12 months to respond with a five-year plan.

R+BA – Those projects in the draft, will it be prescriptive as to for example project X will start between 2018 and 2019 and project Y will follow that from 2020 onwards? Are there timeframes for those projects?

MM – First of all, we talk about options and not necessarily projects and the reason is that our approach is not just about building new pieces of infrastructure. It’s first and foremost about how do we look at demand management and most importantly how do we optimize the current assets? How do we make the most of what we currently have before we look at building new things? We’re very keen to look at policies and regulations which are currently in place and should be amended or new policies and regulations which would help make better use of the existing assets.

The draft strategy will be a series of recommendations, policies and regulations, and new pieces of infrastructure which will be positioned as short, medium, and long-term draft recommendations. We won’t be as precise as saying this should start the second quarter of 2018 but we’re really going to position them as a pipeline. The recommendations will make it very clear as to how they interact with each other.

It will be clear that before you go to that big piece of new infrastructure as option D, you’ve got to do A, B and C beforehand. Everybody will understand why it makes sense to do A, B and C before D. Again, we recommend but the government of the day decides. They may want to go straight to D but everyone will be able to measure the consequences of the impact of bypassing A, B and C and going straight to D.

R+BA – As part of this process you’ve used citizen juries?

MM – Yes

R+BA – How does this work? What have they been deciding upon?

MM – We were very keen to ensure that in process of the developing the 30-year infrastructure we had depth and breadth in the consultation. This was about real, genuine engagement, not just an exercise in ticking a box. The citizen jury is a very interesting way to give a voice to the people. It was fundamental to have the right tool, the right mechanism to have the community express their views.

We’ve created two citizen juries – one in metropolitan Melbourne and another in regional Victoria which is based in Shepparton. These citizen juries are two groups of 40-ish people which have been randomly selected but statistically representative of regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne.

They spend six Saturdays meeting every few weeks and work like a court jury. Each jury has the opportunity to call on experts on a range of issues- from former treasurers, experts in transport planning, specialist in schools or education and so on – in order to gather evidence.

At the same time they are going through all of the options which we tabled. At the end of the process, they will deliberate and provide their recommendations.

The interesting thing with the citizen jury is that you need to reach consensus with forty people. What we’ve seen is when you take forty people from all parts of the socio-demographic fabric of Victoria, you get a lot of common sense.

When you ask them to come up with one common view on the future of transport or education, the answer you get is just fascinating. We’re very keen to see what their recommendations will be, which will form a key input to the draft strategy.

R+BA – Will we be able to see a report on that process and their input? Will that be identifiable in that draft strategy as ‘here’s what the jury said’?

MM – Absolutely. It will be clear where the jury’s recommendations are positioned in the draft strategy but we will also be releasing the citizen juries’ recommendations in full prior to that.

R+BA – When you released the options paper, it must have been terribly frustrating having some politicians and media outlets falsely reporting about Infrastructure Victoria making recommendations for projects rather accurately describing projects in the report as options for consideration. How would you address those commentators?

MM – I fully acknowledge that the complexity of what we’ve embarked upon developing a 30-year infrastructure strategy is not something intuitive to grasp. We’ve been engaging with the media at length to readdress that perception. We are keen to reiterate that these are options, not recommendations. Everything is on the table and this options stage was really when we invited the community to tell us what they think and what we missed as we prepare the draft strategy.

It is very satisfying to feel people are now inside the tent with us and really eager to provide their views. In fact, the number of submissions we’ve received echoes that.

R+BA – How important are cost benefit ratios? Are there circumstances when projects should be built regardless of the cost implications?

MM – Benefit cost analysis is a very interesting aspect of what we are doing. Infrastructure Victoria was created for three purposes. The first one is to develop the 30-year infrastructure strategy. That is a very strong focus this year. The second one is to provide advice to the government on projects and the government has already requested Infrastructure Victoria to provide advice on the second container port in Melbourne. The third is our research program.

Through our research program we looking at the tools currently being used in decision-making and assessing projects, including benefit cost analysis. It’s a very useful tool but its an imperfect tool, because it only captures economic benefits and costs. We are currently trying to capture social and environment benefits in monetary terms.

Currently, we take full cost of an engineering solution, a tunnel for instance, but we do not take account of any benefits from leaving everything above ground flourishing in terms of social and environment impact which is a problem. Everybody recognises that. When I say everybody, I mean Infrastructure Australia and the state infrastructure bodies. Victoria is taking the lead in working on this.

R+BA – Looking back upon the East West Link Saga, what do you take out from that whole process that eventuated?

MM – To be clear, Infrastructure Victoria is positioned to look ahead at the next 30 years. We’re not looking back at past decisions. The past is the past. This is not our field. We are taking for granted as a base case all of the major projects which are fully committed and funded. That’s why people are asking, “Why aren’t you talking about the Western Distributor? Why aren’t you looking at the level crossings?” We are not assessing those. We take those projects already underway as the base case in projecting ahead for the next 30 years. When it comes to what has been known in the past as the East West, we are steering clear from politics. We are steering clear from what it was and we’re looking at what it should be in the future. Our recommendation could be completely different from what has been known as East West. We’re not barracking for an option or solution in particular. We’re just looking in an evidence-based way at what is for the good of Victoria in the next 30 years.

<a href="/news/red-black-interviews-the-ceo-of-infrastructure-victoria-part-2">Continue reading part 2</a>.

Michael Smith is a director of Atelier Red + Black.  This post was originally published on the Red + Black architect <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/redblack-interview-with-michel-masson-ceo-of-infrastructure-victoria-part-1/">blog</a>.
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Red & Black interviews the CEO of Infrastructure Victoria - Part 1

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With the Victorian Government proceeding with Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel, further details have begun to emerge as to how the project will be delivered and what the benefits to Melbourne will be. It is perhaps the right moment to consider more carefully what the architecture within this project will need to deliver. To dive into this project from an architectural view point The Red+Black Architect interviewed emerging designer Justin Marden, who has an international background on underground railway architecture

Red + Black Architect – The Melbourne Metro Rail Project will have five new underground stations along the nine kilometre tunnel. This presents the question what should these stations look like?

Justin Marden –  The look and feel are important, however other factors such as ownership, character, materials, staff, funding models, risk, clients and management are also significant.  With metro stations it’s important to consider long and short term goals and connectivity options in a transparent manner.  For example, what the desired land use will be many decades from now, or how fast people can change trains. At Flinders St Station it’s more than 200% faster to change trains than Southern Cross.

Whilst achieving a design quality of international standard is important, we really need to look towards providing our stations with a local character that can differentiate ourselves from the rest of the world (and Australia) through design identity.

We also need to be playing to our strengths by encouraging greater diversity of design. Perhaps Flinders Street Metro Station could be designed, built, managed, named, staffed, and leased recognizably from the Indigenous community.

I’m actually not aware of any recent strategic infrastructure project in Australia that has significantly included an Indigenous influence. The Melbourne Metro Project presents as a significant opportunity to get serious about indigenous inclusion considering the site’s proximity to the river.

Perhaps a couple of the metro stations could be specifically allocated to a design practice that is led by one of our many fantastic women in architecture. As recently pointed out by Eli Giannini of the AIA’s National Gender Equity Committee, women rarely get the opportunity to lead the work on large scale public projects. These Metro Stations could become an example of governments using their purchasing power to facilitate positive cultural change.

As for the ground level entrances to the stations, perhaps the State government should consider an open A3 sized ideas competition.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/flinders-st-station.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="The bland and anonymous Eastern concourse of Flinders Street Station. A lesson in what not to do."><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="773" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/flinders-st-station.jpg?itok=Pz_ezkX7" title="The bland and anonymous Eastern concourse of Flinders Street Station. A lesson in what not to do." width="580"></a>

<figcaption>The bland and anonymous Eastern concourse of Flinders Street Station. A lesson in what not to do.</figcaption></figure>​

R+BA – It would seem that there are competing interest for each of the new stations to have their own identity, for way finding purposes, but also to be considered part of the ‘set’ of stations in this project. Which of these competing requirements should take priority?

JM- Nominating lines as colours is one key strategy. But the user should also be able to tell the difference of each metro station from inside the train which is difficult with the current Melbourne Loop. Paris and Madrid are very successful in the branding of metro entrance signage. London is also quite developed.

Train station names such as Commonwealth in Singapore only highlight the global influence in grey architecture policy and spaces. So yes these new metro stations need diverse reference points and information presented in a way that local people can understand if we are aiming to get the best result.

R+BA- Perhaps bringing a few of these ideas together it could be possible to have the stations provide a chronological Indigenous story which is told through design. I am thinking of the great work by the Pitcha Makin Fellas that was displayed on the Royal Exhibition Building during White Night 2016. We could have a station which is subtly inspired by the season of butterflies followed by a station inspired by the dry season and so forth. What are your thoughts on that?

JM- I was very impressed by that temporary projection on the world heritage site. Story is important. So yes I do agree with you this may be an opportunity to create something special. Maybe even help people understand this story in a more permanent way.

We should however be very cautious about providing surfaces for audio visual content in our metro stations. There is always a risk with flexible mediums and white/glass surfaces that Stations could be inadvertently transformed into a visual bombardment of advertising. There is always a risk of an architect having no control of something placed on their work to the point it is compromised or designed for that purpose.

Regarding Indigenous design I feel Indigenous Architecture and Design Victoria (IADV) needs more resources. I recently attended Reuben Bergs’ talk at the M-Pavillion and would very much like to see them play a more active forward looking role. The Melbourne Metro project could play a key part in advancing the discussion around Indigenous representation in our built environment.

The City Of Melbourne should support the State government in Melaru which is an innovative freedom lookout for the City Of Melbourne with an Indigenous influence located at the Melbourne visitor centre. It will offer a story and interaction and could even be a metro entrance. I believe this is the best chance for reconciliation and public engagement moving forward. It would demonstrate Indigenous people, culture and design are welcome in the most important part of the city. There is a lot to learn here and many stories to be told.

R+BA – Typically with large engineering led projects it is common for a single large architectural practice to be engaged to provide services across the entirety of the project. Whilst this would no doubt have advantages in project management, do you think it restricts diversity in the architectural outcome?

JM –  There is no doubt one practice may produce less risk but the complexity of co-ordinating Melbourne’s underground is not as far reaching as threading needles in London. So I do believe there should be room to move if a genuine collaboration is chosen.

<a href="http://flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk/HARVARDDESIGN63PRINT.pdf">An Anatomy of Ambition by Bent Flyvbjerg</a> is a worthwhile read which talks about Mega Projects and risk.

R+BA – Are there any particular lessons for this project that we can take from overseas stations?

JM – I have a sense of what commercially will happen between the Grocon CUB site and the space between Melbourne Central. Alameda station in Valencia, Spain by Calatrava which I have visited also does not have the attention to detail as Strogino Station, Moscow which have similar elements. Volokolamskaya station, Moscow  and Strogino demonstrate economic sense in station design given the distance from the central core. Great architecture doesn’t have to cost the earth and architecture should be accessible to everyone.

I do admire Hector Guimard and cast iron entrances in Paris as well as the story of designer Eileen Gray. Glass balustrades break easily. It does take a dedicated team to deliver such projects as Sokol Metro Station in Moscow and the spans of the Pentagon/Metro Centre in Washington.

R+BA – In your view what is the biggest opportunity to be gained through providing high quality architecture at these stations?

JM-  A happier society and people, identity is important. Taking pride in place and feeling a sense of connection and community. I don’t doubt the power of exemplar architecture and design to inspire and motivate people in whatever they want to achieve.

R+BA – Thanks for your time

 

Justin Marden is an emerging designer who has studied architecture. He has an international background in studying transport architecture planning applications. His European metro station design for O’Connell Street in Ireland was published in the European architecture magazine Plan alongside designs by Sir Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind.

Michael Smith is a principal at Ateiler Red+Black. This interview was originally published on the <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/the-opportunities-of-melbourne-metro-rail-a-discussion-with-justin-marden/">Red and Black architect blog</a>. Michael also operates the <a href="https://ratemybuilding.com.au/">Rate My Building website</a>.
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The opportunities of Melbourne Metro Rail: a discussion with Justin Marden

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Editor's note: This is the first part of a wide-ranging interview that Michael Smith, a.k.a. The Red and Black Architect, has conducted with former Premier Ted Baillieu. Follow the links at the end of this article to read parts 2 and 3 on the Red And Black Architect's blog.

From November 2010 through to March 2013, Victoria had an architect as Premier. Ted Baillieu was responsible for bringing White Night to Melbourne as well as instigating the Flinders Street Station design competition in 2012. From his experience in politics and his background for architecture, he has a unique insight into Victoria’s built environment. Recently he sat down in the magnificent Old Treasury Building, to talk at length with The Red+Black Architect on a broad range of issues.

Part 1 – The Architect Premier

Red +Black Architect – It’s perhaps not widely known that before you entered politics you were an architect. How would you describe your architectural career before entering politics.

Ted Baillieu – I certainly didn’t hide it. I guess people don’t focus on other people’s professions.

I wouldn’t pretend to be the greatest architect in the world although I may physically be one of the biggest! We had a small practice, the practice ran from 1981 to around 2006 and my architectural partner died in 2005. For the last few years he was obviously pretty much on his own and I was just a token partner, there for moral support. Prior to that I worked for McGlashan Everist, they had a notable track record. I worked on school projects and some civic projects. We were the first architects on the transformation of the Bourke St Mall many years ago, and I was the project architect for that. Along the way I’ve done some other bits and pieces, but we were residential, we worked some small commercial projects. We did a ski lodge in New Zealand which got a fair bit of attention I still love architecture and I’ve still stayed in touch with most of my colleagues and stay in touch with the faculty. I’ve now got an honorary job with the University of Melbourne helping the faculty.

R+BA – Did your background as an architect assist you in your role as premier?

TB – One of the reasons why I got in to politics was because I was looking at architecture, in the long term, particularly in school work. We did strategic thinking and master planning for schools which was 20-25 years out, and the decisions that are made now affect things long term. That was one of the reasons I got involved. Another reason I got involved was I didn’t like the no ticket no start mentality and I didn’t like an authoritarian approach to the issues of the day that were happening in Tasmania in the early 80s, so they’re pretty much the reasons I got involved. There are very few architects who have been politicians. It’s actually a very good education for a politician, to be able to think about the future, to be able to plan for the future, to be able to read drawings, to talk a language with those who are dealing with long term projects, it’s an asset.

R+BA – I imagine that the broad nature of architecture, knowing a little bit about a wide variety of areas helps?

TB – I think architects have a sense of place, a sense of environment, a sense of footprint, a sense of relationships to other buildings, a sense of the spaces between, a sense of generations, all that is important. And you get a very acute sense of cost.

R+BA – One of the best things, I think, to come out of your premiership was the genuine discussion around the possible futures for Flinders Street Station. Do you regard that competition as a success?

TB – Yes, I absolutely do. The conclusion of the competition took place after I had stepped down, but I thought it was an incredibly valuable exercise and I think the winners<a href="http://www.hassellstudio.com/en/cms-projects/detail/flinders-street-station-/" target="_blank">[Hassell with Herzog &amp; De Meuron]</a> didn’t get the credit they deserved. Anybody who actually saw their presentation rather than just the superficial photograph in the paper was just blown away. I spent quite a bit of time with Hassell afterwards trying to promote their scheme to other people. Those we took it to were blown away. In the end, the current government made their decision, and I think that’s a shame because they had set up a design process which saw the final product staged, implementable in stages, and you could graft on or graft off various aspects of it. It was an incredibly compelling piece of work that they had done. Unfortunately it got reduced to one picture and there were a few in the public arena who didn’t want go there. It will eventually need a brave solution. Just the sheer volume of traffic that will go through Flinders Street Station will require a brave solution, and it can’t be a piecemeal fix the ballroom approach. It wasn’t about the ballroom, it’s about the long term future. They took a bold approach to it.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/fssdc2-by-hassell-and-herzog-de-meuron1.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="274" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/fssdc2-by-hassell-and-herzog-de-meuron1.jpg?itok=E0_lWQfO" title="Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron</figcaption></figure>R+BA – Do you think there’s any possibility that that could be brought out of mothballs?

TB – Well it certainly lends itself to that. There’s nothing happening now that would prevent it, or parts of it, being adopted in the future. They took a design approach which dealt with the transport issues as well. People think it’s just a building, there are transport issues to be dealt with, there’s retail issues, there’s building use, maintenance, there’s everything that goes with it and one of the challenges that we have in Victoria is to accommodate the freight task in this state. Freight and logistics drives our economy in Victoria and a lot of it obviously takes place on the roads and on the rail system. Where those two meet, priority needs to be given to the freight task. I’m not sure that’s happening, and I was continually pressing the need to put the freight logistics exercise first.

R+BA – Stepping back to the Flinders Street Station conversation, there was a substantial community engagement website where you could see videos and you could have your say . Did you have a favourite entry? Was the Hassell and Herzog &amp; De Meuron entry your favourite or was there another one that you thought ‘if it was up to me I’d choose one of the other six’?

TB – Well I deliberately chose not to look at them in advance of the decision being made. I stayed right out of it. And when it was made, I sought a briefing from Hassell, I was blown away by what they did and I noted that it was a unanimous decision. I think that if you see the whole presentation you can understand why it was unanimous. The level of thinking in terms of the engineering, the transport, the service involved, the building itself, the opportunities, the relationship to neighbouring buildings, the other major project tasks that the city faces in terms of the gallery development, the indigenous gallery , the contemporary art space, all of that stuff. They had gone way way beyond the brief to look at the future of Melbourne. I think probably the only thing that featured in people’s eye was the barrel vaults over the tracks themselves and that tended to dominate the discussion.

<figure><a class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" href="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/fssdc1-by-hassell-and-herzog-de-meuron.jpg" rel="gallery-all" title="Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron"><img alt="" class="image-article-full-width-580px" height="327" src="/sites/urban.melbourne/files/styles/article_full_width_580px/public/pictures/article-images/fssdc1-by-hassell-and-herzog-de-meuron.jpg?itok=QZreF404" title="Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron" width="580"></a>

<figcaption>Winning Flinders Street Station Design Competition proposal by Hassell and Herzog De Meuron</figcaption></figure>R+BA – For me, one of the strongest elements of that proposal was the way that the Swanston Street interface worked and how it related to Federation Square. Obviously the corner is very iconic and beautiful, but going towards the Yarra, I see that relationship between Federation Square and Flinders Street Station as critical.

TB – It’s a difficult in between space actually, with all of those rather clunky tram stops which interrupt the traffic itself and the pedestrian traffic, but I thought they’d done a good job opening up that Eastern face, and the barrel forms actually resonated with the original plans and they’d done a lot with thinking about the history of the building as well. Unfortunately the discussion gravitates to what’s happening to the ballroom, which was operable 50 years ago, and what does it look like from above. They are probably two of the least significant things about the station itself.

R+BA – Is part of the problem with that site that one it needs an awful lot of money to do the brave gesture, but two in some quarters it’s seen only as public transport infrastructure. It does have an important public transport role, but I think more importantly, it really is the heart and soul of Melbourne’s cultural identity.

TB – Yes, and I think that’s what Hassell’s tried to bring in to it, to actually reinforce that. Their effort was to turn it in to more than a train station, because it plays a bigger role that that. It has to grow in terms of its capacity, so at the same time it has to grow in terms of its cultural significance and it would be very easy to spend $200 million or $300 million on the station now and not notice the difference, in fact I think the current government have set aside $100 million to effectively do some repair work. And at the end of that I presume we’ll be able to walk around the ballroom and say “hey, the ballroom’s fixed”

R+BA – My understanding is that it doesn’t even stretch as far as the ballroom.

Well if it doesn’t go as far as the ballroom, then the ballroom will remain the standard bearer of the need to do something. The ballroom is an interesting space in itself but it’s a very small part of it. I tell you what, there’s nothing like being up inside the tower, I’m a complete sucker for towers, and to be up inside the clock-face, and then to be above the clock-face and open the windows and look down Elizabeth St.

R+BA – Well to see the photos inside the clock tower when the competition was launched I thought was extraordinary, because you know psychologically that space must exist, but what is it actually like to be in that space?

TB – There’s a beautiful book called <a href="http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-publications/capital-melbourne-when-it-was-capital-city-australia" target="_blank">Capital</a> which tells the story of Melbourne from 1901 to 1927 when Melbourne was the capital of Australia, before Canberra was put together and Burley Griffin’s vision emerged. Melbourne was the centre of all the action and the photo on the front cover is that view from that tower down Elizabeth St and it’s just beautiful.

<a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/ted-baillieu-the-architect-premier-part-2/">Part 2</a>

<a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/ted-baillieu-the-architect-premier-part-3/">Part 3</a>

Michael Smith is a principal at Ateiler Red+Black. This article originally appeared on the <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/ted-baillieu-the-architect-premier-part-1/">Red and Black architect blog</a>. Michael also operates the <a href="https://ratemybuilding.com.au/">Rate My Building website</a>.
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Red and Black Architect interviews Ted Baillieu, the architect premier

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After an extended period of uncertainty left by the previous Victorian State Government, the Premier, Daniel Andrews, has confirmed the appointment of Victoria’s next Government Architect. Architect Jill Garner was chosen personally by the premier out of what would no doubt have been a very impressive list of applicants.

Having worked with an impressive list of key design practices, Jill co-founded Garner Davis Architects in 1990. In 1995 Garner Davis won a substantial international design competition for the Wagga Wagga Civic Centre.

In 2010 Jill joined the Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA) in the role of Associate Government Architect. In September 2014 the previous government architect Geoffrey London left the role after providing ample notice for the then Liberal State Government to provide a replacement. As Associate Government Architect, Jill was leading the OVGA through this politically difficult period.

With the reinstatement of the OVGA into the Department of Premier and Cabinet and the appointment of the Government Architect, Victoria is now much better placed to deal with the substantial design issues with which it is now faced. The Government is pushing forward with a very big agenda which includes improving apartment standards, level crossing removals and substantial urban renewal projects such as Fishermans Bend.

Red + Black Architect (R+BA): What do you anticipate as being the biggest challenge for the Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA)?

Jill Garner (JG): Victoria is going through an incredible time of change in our built environment – projects are large scale, significant, and city changing. It is our challenge to industry and government to demand understanding of the impact of these projects within our existing city and to embed high ambition and interdisciplinary commitment to outcomes that demonstrate quality architectural, landscape and urban design. The challenge for the OVGA is how to cover the ground.

R+BA: You have previously suggested that the OVGA could be involved, through the Design Review Panel, in more everyday planning applications rather than the more specialized government projects. Looking at this from a developer’s viewpoint, how would this process work?

JG: We have now become involved in design review of selected private developments. There are a number of conditions that might trigger a referral to our design review panel including scale, site significance, or consideration of a precedent being set. We have an agreement with the Metropolitan Planning Authority (MPA) that has seen us review more than a dozen proposals in Fishermans Bend, and we are currently forging an agreement with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) for design review to be included in selected Central City projects. We are unhappy that many of the projects seen to date have been brought to design review at a stage where we have limited impact. Interrogation of a masterplan, a site strategy, orientation, contextual studies of scale and fit, and early site moves is more valuable than moving deckchairs on a Titanic.

R+BA: Do you anticipate the OVGA having an increased role to play in the outer suburbs?

JG: The city changing projects I speak of are not limited to the city. The impact of projects such as level crossing removals, higher density residential propositions, and mixed-use ambitions associated with selected transport hubs will all have significant impact on our suburbs. Higher density residential propositions are emerging throughout metropolitan Melbourne, from Wyndham to Frankston. I would hope OVGA can have some influence in embedding an ambition for quality and vision into this current climate.

R+BA: What are your views towards medium rise apartment buildings such as ‘The Commons’ and more recently ‘Nightingale’ which are attempting to offer car free apartments?

JG: In Melbourne we see so few propositions for an alternative type of home, and the model proposed in these projects reflects a residential type that is embraced and embedded in many great cities across the world. Although dense, these projects are human in scale, reflect the individual priorities of the various owners and promote community pride. This type of home, developed through a design led process radically different to the developer-driven model, has the capacity to fill a gap in the current market.

R+BA: In light of the recent VCAT decision against the Nightingale project do you think the VCAT system is broken? Should we for example have a panel of decision makers rather than a single person?

JG: The quotes from the VCAT decision that I read seem a rather extraordinary and disturbing summary of what could have been an intelligent interrogation of the car free proposition and a meaningful discussion of a demographic shift that clearly places less value on a car than might be considered ‘typical’. The Nightingale project might have benefitted from interrogation by our design review panel, and in light of its being a proposition for an alternative housing procurement model, an independent review may have contributed commentary to the design decisions made by the team. In this type of housing model overseas there are diverse propositions regarding cars, including subscriptions to carshare schemes, shared ownership of several smartcars, or precinct-based solutions to parking offsite. The VCAT decision has highlighted that these are critical discussions to have when we are trying to encourage walking, cycling, and public transport use.

R+BA: For a while now the State Government has been investigating how to improve apartment design across the state. Perhaps the main resistance to these efforts have been by those who believe this will translate into substantially more expensive housing. How do you respond to these housing affordability concerns?

JG: There are indeed very loud voices arguing that apartments with better amenity will significantly affect affordability. I believe affordability is a far more complex issue than this and it will not be solved by dividing a single site into smaller and smaller ill-considered parts. Community response to the Better Apartment Discussion Paper has clarified several misconceptions about the housing market: there is a demographic that is not afraid of living more densely than the block/house/garden model; that same demographic is not wedded to the car in the traditional way; that demographic simply cannot find what they seek in the current market. We are lacking diverse, innovative, alternative models that I suspect could be made affordable.

R+BA: If we get the apartment design rules and regulations right, do you think there could be benefit in providing a zoning in certain areas, which allows apartment building as of right, within the strict design parameters, that could effectively bypass planning all together?

JG: Design rules and regulations generally seek to raise the bar of the lowest common denominator to a standard deemed ‘acceptable’. Allowing apartments as of right is unlikely to be the best outcome. However, a precinct-wide strategy that considers quality higher denser housing alongside the design of streets, public amenity, landscape, communal parking sites etc. would certainly contribute to neighbourhoods that elicit community pride.

R+BA: With the recent appointment of a Federal Minister for Cities, do you anticipate having more interactions at a federal level?

JG: There is a network of Government Architects across Australia (currently all states and territories except Tasmania) and we have committed as a team to do our best to engage with this exciting new appointment.

R+BA: Do you think there is merit in a Federal Government Architect to help advise the Minister for Cities and the Federal Government?

JG: There would be considerable merit in the new Minister receiving wise counsel about the role, impact and legacy of good design across the integrated disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.

R+BA: You have been with the OVGA for some time now having previously served as the Associate Government Architect. What do you think has been the biggest success for the Victorian public, that is a direct result of the work of the OVGA?

JG: When I joined the OVGA, activity in Victoria’s built environment was slower, and we had the space and time to consider how to embed initiatives that had the potential to make a difference to both process and quality of outcomes. We are now in a time where large scale projects – both public and private – are going to significantly change the built environment of our cities. The Victorian public should be pleased that we have embedded our Victorian Design Review Panel (VDRP) initiative to perform a critical and highly visible role in project critique in an effort to raise ambition, awareness and the design bar. The public should also be pleased that our resolve to highlight the poor amenity we could see emerging in higher density housing has resulted in a transparent process of review and change.

R+BA: Thank you for your time.

With Jill’s appointment it is clear that the State Government is committed to strengthening the OVGA to provide the very best advice across the full spectrum of government projects. These projects will have a substantial impact on Melbounre’s future. If we are to have a livable sustainable health and productive built environment, good design is the key.

The next Red+Black exclusive interview will be a with the Planning Minister Richard Wynne, discussing a broad range of planning and urban design issues.

Michael Smith is a principal at Ateiler Red+Black. This interview originally appeared on the <a href="https://theredandblackarchitect.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/redblack-interview-with-victorias-government-architect-jill-garner/">Red and Black architect blog</a>. Michael also operates the <a href="http://ratemybuilding.com.au/">Rate My Building website</a>.
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