Delivering architecture and interiors, we have designed a mixed-use apartment that occupies almost an entire city block adjacent to Brunswick Station.
The site centres on a heritage-listed chimney – a remnant of the industrial facility that once stood here. Two heritage-listed Victorian houses are retained. The starting point for the project was a single question: how does a development of this scale deliver a net community benefit for the neighbourhood?
The answer is organised around movement and public space. An east-west and a north-south laneway run through the block, meeting at a new public square surrounding the chimney. This creates a pedestrian and bicycle thoroughfare connecting directly to Brunswick Station – a link the area was missing. A single car park entry off Victoria Street keeps the entire ground plane free of vehicles.
Four buildings sit around that central intersection, stepping down from 11 storeys to meet the single-storey Victorian terraces on the boundary. Rather than reading as one large object, the massing is broken into a cluster of separate volumes through a series of cuts and changes in form. The ground floor is a mix of residential, commercial and hospitality uses, with the shopfront interface deliberately fine-grained – individual canopies and separate entries are a response to the Brunswick context. In particular, the colourful shopfronts on Sydney Road and the climbing trellises on verandahs. Classic Brunswick red and cream brick lines the laneways, also drawing directly from the heritage of the suburb. Upper-level forms feature pigmented concrete with patterned surfaces in red, green and blue.
The edge along the rail line is treated as an active interface. Windows and openings face the line in anticipation of the rail crossing removal, which will introduce bike paths and linear parks along that corridor. Ground-floor hospitality and retail spaces are positioned to open directly onto it.
342-348 Victoria Street,
Brunswick
A large-scale apartment precinct with ground-level retail and hospitality for Assemble.
The site centres on a heritage-listed chimney – a remnant of the industrial facility that once stood here. Two heritage-listed Victorian houses are retained. The starting point for the project was a single question: how does a development of this scale deliver a net community benefit for the neighbourhood?
Rather than reading as one large object, the massing is broken into a cluster of separate volumes through a series of cuts and changes in form.
