Arcadia apartments is completed with tenants now occupying retail and residential units.
This project seeks to respond to the future character and uses of this small business zoned area within, and perhaps, its wider role as a more unique or specialised satellite of the Maroubra Junction commercial and residential precinct.
This is a contemporary architectural statement which appeal can be lifted by the hub of activity at the Junction whilst making the most of its own prominent position on Bunnerong and Maroubra Roads and its linking position to other shopping and residential areas.
The building form provides good opportunity for all units to achieve plenty of natural lighting and cross ventilation across a narrow building depth. The southern courtyard has also enabled the more critical windows cross ventilation. A roof garden is proposed which will provide opportunities for a well-insulated concrete slab. There is also an allocated area for a basement water tank.
Opening up of the northern elevation with regularly expressed and spaced balconies, windows, doors and screening mechanisms has created a very ordered northern facade with the repetition of vertically spaced screens and horizontally arranged balconies and awnings.
The north west corner has been opened up with the re-orientation of the vertical screens to express the turning of the building from its street address to its habitation address and to express the termination of the building block’s row of western street frontages.
The street address has been defined by the grid patterned tiled facade which has picked up the proportions of the neighbouring building at No. 313. The recesses, vertical screening elements and main shop awnings have helped to serve practical purposes of sun control and privacy but also to define areas of entry from shop fronts to decorative linear elements. The curved forms of the main shop front awnings have not only identified entries but also provided a flow of space to accommodate a significant street tree.
The top floors are set back from the street and are played down with light colours, smooth textures and less articulations than the brighter coloured busier tiled facade which pick up the more critical contextual proportions required in the street.
Coloured translucent tints to certain glazed panels serve to introduce some brighter, warmer colours into the scheme and to counter the monochrome linear elements of the facade.
For the ten design principles see the Arcadia gallery.
PROJECT
Multi-unit residential flat building and retail
1 x 4 storey building containing 2 X retail outlets and 10 units (1 X 3-bedroom, 2 X 2-bedroom, 7 X 1-bedroom) and 1 X basement level car park
Randwick Council jurisdiction
309-311 Bunnerong Road, Maroubra
Completed