44-46 Princes Highway

Development located at 44-46 Princes Highway in the urban area of St Peters that is subjected to rapid urban renewal.
The site has dual frontage with Barwon Park Road to the East and Princes Highway to the West. The surroundings to the North, West and South consist of 4-7 storey mixed development.

The site housed a collection of former factory/warehouse buildings running across the full extent of the site and built over a period. The building fronting Princes Highway was initially built in 1920, modified due to road widening in 1932 and subsequent modifications over a period. The building was found to be in very poor condition and altered over time.

The factory fronting Barwon Park Road was built in 1934. The 4-storey building was largely intact, but extensively run down.
The development is made up 40 apartments, incorporates various dwelling mixes and sizes and adaptable units promoting diversity, affordability and an improvement in local housing choice. The unit planning is optimised for privacy between the public and private functional areas within units.

Streetscape activation is provided through retail/cafes on both frontages. A design framework was established on the principle of palimpsest, to provide an architectural narrative, that through an adaptive reuse approach, would allow the existing text and history to remain where possible and provide a contemporary overlay that is in dialogue with the existing and had reference to the history of the precinct and the brickworks era.

A clear design strategy was established to maintain, revitalise and celebrate the character and history of the existing warehouse building on Barwon Park Road. The contemporary component added behind and above was carefully crafted to ensure it acted in a recessive manner to both existing building and streetscape. The retention of the existing building preserves part of the history of the area, adds richness to the façade whilst providing significant saving to the cost of the building.

The robust architectural narrative on the Princes Highway façade is driven by the orientation and harsher contextual and considerations. The façade expresses an interplay between fine and coarse grain materiality with an underlying industrial character. Operable louvres provide a richness in both colour and materiality to the façade and composition whilst enabling privacy and solar control for the residents.

The outcome presents a high-quality mixed use development insertion into the Princes Highway and Barwon Park Road streetscape and is designed as a modern yet contextual piece of architecture.