WMK Architecture has prepared designs for an 11-storey office building above an existing car park in Abbotsford by Birrarung (the Yarra River).
The existing car park will be retained, with changes made to mitigate flood risk and a new brick façade added that referenced the historic red brick industrial buildings of the surround area. The number of car parks will be reduced from 470 to 303, with spaces to remain available for commercial lease.
The office above will have a “distinct but harmonious” relationship with the lower car park levels and will contain 17,038 square metres of office floorspace.
“Brickwork features predominantly at the lower levels of the built form, which sleeves the existing car park structure, and industrial type window fenestration and a sawtooth profile echo and acknowledge the surrounding architecture at street level,” WMK states in planning documents.
“The upper office floorplates are encased in a lighter and more refined steel and glass structure with expressed external elements, framing a second skin to the facade which also provides practicality in the form of solar shading.”
The building will reach 63 metres above ground level with the massing of the building arranged to maximize the articulation in the façade and allow for the inclusion of landscaped terraces on top of the podium and at higher levels.
These terraces “reinforce the connection to the leafy surrounds and provides occupants with a more integrated outlook of greenery from the office and terrace spaces.”
TCL is the project’s landscape architect.
A development application submitted by developer Forza Capital is currently before the City of Yarra, with a decision expected after 26 October, following the local council elections.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
