Y Suites on Oxley

This 13-storey co-living development for students accommodates 472 residents and sits just 75 m from the new Crows Nest Metro Station. Communal spaces are placed at the ground floor and at roof level, at either end of the residential floors. On the ground floor these include a cinema, gym and communal laundry, and the roof has an indoor and outdoor communal area with a lawn and deck overlooking Sydney. The building is expressed as a tower set back above a two-and-a-half-storey podium, with a clear base, middle and top. Recessed stair and lift cores divide the long Nicholson Street facade into three distinct parts, and vertically proportioned framing gives the tower a slender profile. A central spine runs the full length of each floor and brings natural ventilation, daylight and outlook to the corridors.

The site’s two frontages offer the opportunity to create a meaningful public domain. A colonnade wraps three sides of the podium, and together with the permeable metal screen, landscaped setbacks and active, transparent edges, it engages directly with the Oxley Street and Nicholson Street pedestrian environment. The two-and-a-half-storey podium height also responds to the scale of the existing two- to three-storey townhouses along Nicholson Street, so the building connects the street’s current character with the higher-density future of the Crows Nest TOD Precinct.

The podium above the Oxley Street entry is designed as a canvas for public artwork by an Indigenous artist, who will be engaged after the development is approved.

The result is a highly considered, respectful and contextually fitting built form that contributes positively to an evolving precinct.