Park Road Apartments

Country: Bunurong

The project consists of modernising a 1970 era building to provide additional and flexible learning areas for students. Closed off cell spaces are opened up to each other with large glazed sliding panels, creating a permeable interior space that can accommodate a variety of learning settings and group sizes. The acoustic engineered treatment removes noise problems while the glazed partitions and tailored staff work space enables excellent professional development of the teaching staff. The building envelope is retrofitted with clerestory glazing two improve natural daylighting and is designed to integrate with natural outdoor learning spaces. Significant flooding problems were resolved through staged delivery of large scale civil engineering drainage design.

This infill development proposal implements a contemporary apartment building into a desirable inner residential suburb of Melbourne. The project replaces an existing highly altered Victorian villa on a streetscape mixed in age and scale. The development is comprised of 8 apartments, each varying in type, scale and aspect, with a high standard of residential amenity. Each apartment is designed to capture an abundance of natural light, as well as the prevailing breezes to naturally cross-ventilate interior spaces. An increase in density is softened through the use of screening gardens, located outside bedroom and living room windows, filtering views from the site.

The form and minimal material palette express a contemporary interpretation of a traditional building form, notably the domestic roofscapes prevalent on Park Road.   The design resolution avoids a monolithic form, and aims to disguise the scale and mass of the building in the residential street.