The site is a long, thin parcel of land freed up by the Murrumbeena level crossing removal project, running parallel to the train line and Neerim Road. Its proportions created an opportunity: a single-loaded building where every apartment faces north, with cross-flow ventilation and natural light from both sides.
A corridor runs along the southern edge, allowing every apartment to face north. On the ground floor, a pocket park on the northern side creates a small public square beneath the building form. This does a few things – it gives the area a more generous pedestrian connection through to Murrumbeena Station, it allows an established tree to be retained, and it provides an undercover public interface for a ground floor hospitality tenancy.
Because the building is long, the design breaks it into a series of four block forms, each with its own colour identity drawn from the local material palette – greens, blues and reds. Each element drops to the street with a small canopy, and between them, a series of arcades connect north to south through the site. These arcades double as building entries and link through to the car park at the rear.
The columns and canopies at street level are scaled to draw from the existing fine-grain shopfronts opposite on Neerim Road. The majority of the ground plane is retail tenancies.
Above, the building form steps back with a series of cuts and layers to break the mass and transition the scale down toward the neighbouring buildings. These breaks create opportunities for communal spaces, including outdoor landscape terraces, a bookable dining area and a wellness space.
467-473 Neerim Road,
Murrumbeena
An apartment building with ground floor retail adjacent to Murrumbeena Station.
The building form steps back with a series of cuts and layers to break the mass and transition the scale down toward the neighbouring buildings. These breaks create opportunities for communal spaces, including outdoor landscape terraces, a bookable dining area and a wellness space.
