Elenberg Fraser is a leading architectural firm transforming architectural practice across Asia-Pacific. They support fusing a design studio‘s inventiveness with a business firm’s focus on results.
Their projects stand out for their outstanding design, their achievement of market objectives, and for raising the bar in architecture by generating thought-provoking innovations, while recognising its roots and the diversity of influences, both historical and contemporary.
Fifteen Most Iconic Projects of Elenberg Fraser
The projects are developed independently, reacting to each one’s unique site, location, and purpose. The goal is to discover and communicate each design’s individuality via the constructed form. The notable projects for the firm are listed below.
Liberty Tower | Elenberg Fraser
Elenberg Fraser’s Liberty Tower’s sheer aluminium wall became the city’s Western fortress wall, subtly designating the CBD as its city-state. This wall is made of hammered silver sheeting that has been folded and bent through its balustrades and supports.
The perforated aluminium depicts the skyscraper and its immediate surroundings in agony and suffering as the structure appears ready to fall off its tilted façade. Liberty is Elenberg Fraser’s first CBD tower, which is rugged and brutal, a product of the harsh Western milieu it inhabits – its bullet-riddled screen defies the postmodernist movement.
Shadowplay
Melbourne‘s striking southern entryway, Shadowplay, embraces its setting, a field of innovation and commerce on Southbank. The façade drips with a contradiction of opulent weightlessness, like a silk scarf caught in a breeze: a woven, rippling silver surface that is simultaneously present and not there, cascading over the strength underlying its angular shape. Featuring a feminine form balanced by a masculine metallic edge and a black glow, Shadowplay will be a beacon for southbound travellers.
380 Lonsdale
380 Lonsdale Street is quite cosmopolitan, and it offers all that Melbourne needs. Tropical flair and Singaporean precinct urban design are infused into this mixed-use development in the central CBD. 380 The tower shapes seem like silver waves emerging from the site’s centre. Moulded bay windows, a modern take on a classic method, give the building surface a vertical rhythm, like a cascade pouring into the garden below.
Site One
Site One, a grain elevator, provides small and micro businesses with somewhere to call home and the amenities that larger-scale workplaces offer. The levels are organised progressively; the structure slopes back from the ground to accommodate various typologies. The surface’s staccato rhythm becomes reflective and uneven, forming sunshades: the sun hits the side instead of the glass itself. Site One enables Melbourne’s famous small enterprises to interact with this district and share the collective character of distinctive architecture.
401 St. Kilda Road | Elenberg Fraser
The 15 apartments at 401 St Kilda Road are modern, luxurious homes within apartments located close to South Yarra, South Melbourne, and cafes and restaurants. 401 St Kilda Road is the meeting point of nature and architecture, drawing inspiration from modernist works such as John Lautner’s Arango House in Acapulco. The proximity of a suburban home to the environment minimises urban sprawl and encourages people to enjoy a high degree of luxury living.
Realm
This 40-storey tower enters the stratosphere of Adelaide’s built environment; at 132 metres, it is the highest residential structure in the city. A neatly folded, bright gold lantern rises over the mass of antique buildings at its base. The building’s shape is constricted at the waist, with attractive angularity thrust in and extending above. The geometric arrangement of perforated gold screens along the east and west façades offers sun and wind protection for the apartments and balcony activation. Shiny glass and silver balustrades highlight the shimmer effect. The geometric design complements and contrasts the heritage structures around the location, including one of the iconic churches.
Clara Apartments
The Elenberg-Fraser-designed residential structure is inspired by its surroundings. Forms and details suggest the beginnings of architecture and habitation in nature. The twisting chrome screens cover these outdoor spaces and provide privacy. In addition, they emulate the dappled shadows that nature generates, adding another depth to this inhabitation. From the visceral and sensual roots of the building to the precise accuracy of natural features, geometric and mathematical, Clara embraces life.
501 Swanston
The pinnacle of exquisite design and architectural perfection has relocated to 501 Swanston Street. The project integrates two cutting-edge showrooms for the Audi and Maserati brands and PDG Tower improvements, showcasing the finest of both worlds at this prominent inner-city location. The responsibility in this complicated commercial project was to produce a design that reflected the individuality of the many designs. Moreover, it was to adhere to Audi and Maserati’s strict worldwide brand criteria.
Fifty Albert
Fifty Albert reflects the refinement and opulence of South Melbourne’s lifestyle. It has ground floor business and residents-only areas, 7 1/2 levels of parking, and 21 stories with 282 residential apartments. The grand facades with balconies decorated, the elegantly feathered entryway, and the subtly incorporated heritage facade front are all aesthetic highlights.
A’Beckett Tower | Elenberg Fraser
The tower is a high-density residual infill prototype that sits on a 900 sqm site. The transition from the podium to the building is done unconventionally with a thin veneer of flats enclosing the parking. This is accessed via elevators for vehicles, freeing the street front from ramps and 347 louvres in 16 different colours. The colour palette draws inspiration from the once-drought-stricken terrain of Australia.
14050 Avant
A 55-story residential building stands on A’Beckett Street. The structural components that constitute the mass are linked using a geometric design. This unusual façade vividly demonstrates how structural density is compacted at the base and extends to the top. The rich violet glazing even has a backstory, a homage to developer World Class Land and its parent firm Aspial. This is because their family jewellery business developed valuable metals for making purple gold.
Swanston Central | Elenberg Fraser
Taking inspiration from that axial notion, this residential tower, located above the intersection of the offset Hoddle and Carlton grids, mirrors geometric tension in its faceted planes that reach out into the sky. Intersecting vertical fingers of descending pink and rising green glass, split by a separating silver colour, create a dazzling dichroic appearance across the façade’s height. Inspired by Escher’s ambiguity, this provides a dramatic vertical shift suggestive of the transition from solid to liquid to vapour. The building pays homage to the site’s distinct sense of heritage while looking forward to Melbourne’s bright future.
Ajman Waterfront
The smallest of the United Arab Emirates, Ajman, which translates to “the small city” in Arabic, enjoys a scenic setting along 1 km of the Persian Gulf. Considering the location, there has been one fundamental need with any concept devised – the layout and architecture required to meet the severe Middle Eastern environment. Ajman needed an introduction to the notion of inner-city living, the townhouse and bustling streetscapes. They designed mixed-use precincts evocative of traditional Souks, featuring stores on the bottom floor and three-story homes above.
Huski
In the realm of Australian Alpine hospitality, Huski is a one-of-a-kind snowflake. It was designed to be distinctive from the traditional Alpine architecture in Australia’s ski resorts. The site’s wedged character lends itself to a radiating layout – the shape resembles a European sauna, with timber boxes stacked across the façade. Each box’s perimeter programme is tessellated – some are bedrooms, others are terraces, and some are living – to create an ‘inhabited façade’ with individuals conducting different activities in different spots around the structure’s surface.
Move-in | Elenberg Fraser
The newly designed Move-in showroom is inspired by brick and the material wall, precisely at the point where the brick wall breaks down and becomes the “unwall.” This material-based investigation draws inspiration from the work of SITE Architecture founder James Wines, who infused the literal into the most ordinary architectural forms. The team worked on the project from beginning to end, handling the design along the way.
Citations:
- Architects, A. (n.d.). Elenberg Fraser – Melbourne, Australia – architects – about. Australian. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://www.australian-architects.com/en/elenberg-fraser-melbourne/about
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Liberty Tower: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/liberty-tower
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Shadowplay: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/shadowplay
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). 380 Lonsdale: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/380-lonsdale
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Site one: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/site-one
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). 401 st Kilda road: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/401-st-kilda-road
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Realm: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/realm
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Clara Apartments: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/clara-apartments
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). 501 Swanston: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/501-swanston
- Group, H. (n.d.). Fifty Albert: Hickory Group. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/fifty-albert
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). A’Beckett Tower: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/abeckett-tower
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). 14050 Avant: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/14050-avant
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Swanston Central: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/swanston-central
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Ajman waterfront: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/ajman-waterfront
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Huski: Elenberg Fraser Architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/huski
- Fraser, E. (n.d.). Move-in: Elenberg Fraser architecture. Archello. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://archello.com/project/move-in
