The brutalist former children’s court building in Sydney’s Glebe will be replaced with a housing development designed by DKO, Archer Office and Oculus after a development application for the site was submitted to the City of Sydney for assessment.
The council had fought for years to save the Bidura Metropolitan Remand Centre, designed by the office of the NSW Government Architect, from demolition, but lost the battle in May 2019.
Developer Vision Land held a design excellence competition for the project in September 2019. The scheme by DKO, Archer Office and Oculus was unanimously chosen by a selection panel over rival schemes by Group GSA and MHNDU.
The winning scheme comprises 61 apartments and seven terrace houses, a music room on the lower ground level and a communal green space.
“A distinctive feature of this scheme is the creation of a lofty, six-metre wide vertical aperture through the built form to create a vista through to the gardens in the adjacent development to the north,” states a competitive design alternatives report submitted to council. “This created opportunity for sunlight and ventilation to the central courtyard.
The original competition-winning scheme for 357 Glebe Point Road by DKO, Archer Office and Oculus.
“The scheme proposed a range of sustainability initiatives to meet the required ESD targets, including the re-use of materials from the existing building and a fossil fuel free approach incorporating a ground-sourced thermal heat pump.”
In 2019, DKO founding partner and principal Koos de Keijzer told Australian Financial Review, “It was a very political site because it’s the old Metropolitan Remand Centre, which is a building with a number of fine brutalist features in it.
“Some people love brutalism, others hate it. I think it’s very much an architectural authenticity and so our approach was to reuse as much of the existing remand centre as we could so there’s a lot of fine timber in it, a lot of fine stonework and bush-hammered concrete.”
The selection panel said, “The scheme has strong architectural merit and presents well to the street frontages, providing good activation and a welcoming presentation to the public domain.
“There was a risk of the large envelope being monolithic and out of scale with the fine grained setting, however the arrhythmic articulation of the projecting horizontal spandrels and interplay with balcony soffits is particularly successful in mitigating this concern, at the same time providing opportunity for integrated planting to terrace edges and shading of facades. The compositional interplay between these elements and the simple vertical green climbing frames delivers potential for a robust and enduring architectural quality within a cost-effective framework.”
A state heritage-listed Victorian Regency building on the site, Bidura House, will be returned to residential use after years of operating as a commercial building. A heritage impact statement in the development application notes, ” It is anticipated that when a new owner for the house is found that they may submit a DA for works to the house.”
Source: Architecture - architectureau
