A proposal for a $341 million mixed-use precinct on a former drive-in cinema site in Caddens, 50 kilometres west of Sydney’s CBD, has been lodged for planning approval.
Designed by Group GSA for developer Holdmark Property Group, the state-significant development application comprises 17 mid-rise buildings, delivering a total of 482 homes and 3,461 square metres of retail, new streets and community space.
The 8.1-hectare site, which is located within walking distance of Western Sydney University’s growing Kingswood campus and the Nepean Hospital health precinct, adjoins the existing Caddens Corner shopping centre.
Group GSA architect and project lead Alberto Murgia said the masterplan is structured around a permeable, walkable street grid that expands the existing retail precinct and strengthens local amenity. “Our landscape-first, Country-led approach focuses on a mix of high-quality and affordable homes, delivered within a generous public realm that builds on the precinct’s evolving character,” he commented.
At the core of Group GSA’s organisational strategy is a new “village green” civic hub and central pedestrian spine called the “six seasons walk”, which links together the green with two other major parks, a cultural trail that weaves oral histories and site narratives, and a preserved and expanded Cumberland Plain Woodland nature reserve along the site’s northern edge.
According to the architects, a series of Indigenous co-design workshops with local Aboriginal stakeholders shaped the cultural framework for the precinct. As a result, the design embraces water, sky and Country as key connectors, restoring natural ecologies and expanding habitat, and integrating endemic plantings, organic built forms, natural materials and water-sensitive landscapes.
Group GSA’s design of the built form responds to the site’s varying edge conditions, with two-storey terraces on the southern boundary and modulated apartment buildings stepping in height across the precinct in response to the site’s topography.
The palette of the project’s north-eastern buildings picks up on the colours and textures of the nature corridor and employs layered planting to create an architectural expression that recedes into the landscape, while the southern terraces adopt articulated brickwork with deep reveals and expressed thresholds. The buildings that border the village green employ stepped forms and active retail frontages on the ground level, with dining that spills out from beneath a continuous colonnade.
Murgia commented, “Our proposal delivers a village-scale centre that supports social interaction and community identity while demonstrating a long-term vision for sustainable growth within the Werrington Enterprise Living and Learning (WELL) Precinct.”
“By pairing mixed-tenure housing with flexible communal indoor and outdoor spaces, the precinct is designed to foster social diversity, wellbeing and a strong sense of community ownership.”
Source: Architecture - architectureau
