The Site: 

At the intersection of roads traveling in all directions into and out of the city of Newcastle, lies the remnants of ‘the store’. A Co-Opp where a collective of smaller businesses sold their goods and produce and shared the profit and costs with customers. it was a place where you could interact with a diverse range of people from a broad range of backgrounds. Today, this place houses a dwindling collection of small buildings and small businesses quickly being bought out and flattened by large development firms erecting anonymous high rises. 

The Problem: 

A collection of developers and the local council are branding this place as the up and coming heart of Newcastles CBD. The issue however is that instead of well designed vibrant streets, civic minded squares and an architecture dedicated to the human scale, the big urban idea is to flatten the existing building stock, erect two 100m tall towers and dedicate 80% ground plane to a bus interchange with 5 levels of car-parking above it. Whats worse, our brief was to just accept these conditions, design a standard floor plate for apartments, consider the ground landscaping and detail the facade for the towers. 

Highrise Typology

High rise buildings have been evolving as a typology for over 130 years now, the challenge however is the same critique that i had of the existing urban condition below could easily be applied to each floor plate. No consideration of ‘street design’, public space or urban amenity. Today the high rise typology throughout Australian is almost uniform in its composition. A central core, two to six apartments off a narrow corridor with each ‘home’ facing out from one another as if positioned in a game of musical chairs. In some instances there is common amenity and public domain on the ground, however it’s generally dedicated to mass planting and circulation rather than a place for neighbours to meet or interact. hence, the Australian dream = the suburban dream.

A Radical Departure 

What if you thought about a floor plate of apartments as an urban street, if you took all the parts from the trees, to the tiny informal parks and even the kindergarten down the block and threw it into the mix. Okay for this to happen you might need some more height for the trees to grow and you’d probably want some natural light into the space so in between homes there needs to be some void space. 

Then, what if you took it to the next level and said that just like a street, the homes where going to face each other, they where going to have quirky bits of shared space and you would be able to glimpse through a front window into the life that happens inside the home. 

The final step, Adapt the model to the climate. With minor climatic change through the year and seasons, newcastle is the ideal location for predominantly outdoor living. Summer months require some shade and breeze, but 50m above the street, this is easy to come by. In this instance we turned each apartment into a tiny verandah house, just like a verandah house the perimeter walls can all open and close, the inside is flexible and simple and bathrooms are kept to the perimeter so the extraordinary view is reserved for times in the day we bath or prepare meals. 

The Tall Section

In an effort to get closer to the number of homes you might have one one street and to get adequate light and ventilation for trees to grow in the centre of the floor plate, two out of every 3 levels where removed and apartments where stacked on top of each other with an open void space in the centre. (see ‘smaller taller apartments’) Also sown in the section by different tones of red are a mix of commercial and residential in each neighbourhood, the idea was to have a mix of residence and general public passing through the space rather than just stacking purely residential neighbourhoods. 

The Ground

By shifting most of the commercial programme throughout neighbourhoods above, the towers have a little more freedom in the way they touch the ground (they don’t have to be totally encased by podiums). In the ground level perspective the tower on the left is intended to rise from ground level planting and vegetation with dramatic columns and exaggerated sun fins. while the second tower to the right lands on two key public aspects to the programme separated by a tall open air laneway under the tower above. The space to the right is intended to be a gallery while the arches to the left are intended to be a sub branch of the public library.