On the site of an existing carpark, a nine-storey commercial office tower has been greenlit for approval from the City of Hobart. Authored by Hanging Garden Group – a company partly owned by founder of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) David Walsh – the development includes a mix of retail and office spaces designed by Fender Katsalidis.
The project is the first stage of a broader masterplan, which seeks to transform an entire city block bordered by Bathurst, Watchorn, Liverpool and Murray Streets into a hospitality precinct with a hotel, apartments, co-working and performance spaces, and retail.
Melbourne-based property development group Riverlee and local creative agency Darklab (the studio behind the iconic Dark Mofo festival), worked together with Fender Katsalidis and Six Degrees Architects to develop the vision for the 9,000-square-metre site, which has been slowly amassed by the developer over a twenty-year period. It currently houses the creative team’s earlier project for a series of green spaces and hospitality venues, which are united under the banner “In The Hanging Garden.”
According to the Riverlee’s website, “The ongoing evolution of The Hanging Garden precinct will see it expanded to create a place that will serve the community now and into the future. Once completed, the precinct will retain the original site’s rich history while establishing one of Australia’s most intriguing cultural destinations and setting a new benchmark for Hobart’s ongoing cultural development.”
Several culturally-significant buildings, including the historic Odeon Theatre, completed in 1916, are located within the precinct. The office proposal itself is located adjacent to the modernist Construction House by Bush Parkes Shugg and Moon Architects in 1956, and opposite The Commons, designed by Core Collective Architects and completed in 2020.
Residents of the latter expressed concerns with the massing and visual bulk of the development – which exceeds the permitted height standards – while the plans were on exhibition from late October until early November. According to the minutes of council’s Planning Authority Committee Meeting on 4 December, these sentiments were echoed by the city’s Urban Design Advisory Panel. “The panel had some concerns particularly in regard to the public amenity for the surrounding streets, especially the fine-grained Watchorn Street, however the panel was generally agreeable to the height and bulk in its townscape context,” the minutes read.
The approved tower includes close to 9,500 square metres of office space over eight storeys, and approximately 330 square metres of retail space located on the ground floor. Similar to the Mondrian-inspired, mosaic-tiled facade of the neighbouring Construction House, the new building’s concrete facade is intended as a random and playful ordering of solid and void, and will be treated with a palette of warm tones and textures.
As design lead for the project, Fender Katsalidis partner James Pearce commented that the building’s massing was envisioned as being “composed of two parts: a solid, textured part that would be more of the human scale […] to break the building up along the long length of the site, to the rhythm of the street […] and then a lighter, glassier, smoother form, recessed behind that street wall […] that blends a bit into the sky and is more recessive.”
In the proposal, existing trees on Watchorn Street are complemented by new planting to the side of the entry at 116 Bathurst Street. Pearce notes, “By being set back from Bathurst Street, it [the entry] reveals more of Construction House, so you still see the side of that building that has the actual name of the building on it.” The building’s landscaping also extends onto several upper level terraces.
Having recently acquired Construction House, Hanging Garden Group are in the process of upgrading and renaming this building to “Max Angus House,” in honour of the mosaic artist behind its heritage-listed facade. Elsewhere in the precinct, Hanging Garden Group is working with Six Degrees Architects to develop the hotel, residential and other commercial components of the masterplan.
On the masterplan’s website, creative director at Darklab Leigh Carmichael noted, “We want In The Hanging Garden to provide space for creativity to emerge, for joy and laughter and celebration to continue, for friendships to grow, and we want the precinct to be a symbol for the new Tasmania, one of inclusion, hope and tolerance.”
Source: Architecture - architectureau
