VIEW was conceived through a design excellence competition for a mixed use tower within the Sydney suburbian town centre of Rockdale. It aimed to encapsulate and extend the vibrant character of the existing lowscale stock and present in an iconic form, the ambitions of its future character.
Project Name: View Rockdale
Studio Name: Fuse Architecture
Project size: 15637 m2
Site size: 1696 m2
Project Budget: $27000000
Completion date: 2020
Building levels: 11
Location: Sydney, Australia
Photography: Tom Ferguson
As a studio, we sought to explore the latent potential for innovation in multiple dwelling housing, to provide homes that were economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable and provide an appropriate gateway building into an aspirational town centre.
On a compromised site, sandwiched between a busy arterial road, a railway line, and directly under a flight path, the technical considerations though complex, were skilfully curated, transforming inherent constraints into poetic design solutions that helped deliver a sophisticated, confident and beautiful scheme without artistic compromise.
The requirement for design excellence was used as an opportunity to challenge from first principles the projects ambitions, planning controls, technical considerations and tectonics, to ultimately maximise its impact. The scheme distilled into a contextual framework the delivery of what is Rockdale’s first design excellence building.
The outcome is an architecture that exceeds the standards set within market housing in Sydney’s outer ring suburbs, an elegant building in form, appropriate for its time, purpose and context. The design is an elegant two tower form that provides 91 high quality residential apartments, and 615sqm of active ground floor retail.
At heart of the development is an open breezeway, which compositionally unites the towers whilst practically allowing residents to turn their backs away from the compromised environment. This planning strategy maximises the quantum of north facing apartments for optimum orientation and amenity, allowing the building to breathe whilst also capturing distant city views for maximum commercial appeal.
The breezeway is veiled with a metallic golden screen derived from the organic lines of neighbouring Botany Bay. This formal gesture is reinforced with an important overlay for social interaction. Bridges and voids weave through the space and connect vertically dispersed communal courtyards. These green spaces are raised for protection from the harshness of the ground plane and act both as an environmental filter and a quiet space in which to retreat.
View is an architecture that encourages active use and focuses on resident wellbeing. It elevates the ritual of arriving and leaving home into the ceremonial. The form was studied extensively to ensure technical input from acoustics, mechanical, landscape and wind engineers to maximise the breezeway benefits to future occupants.
Successful urban design aspects of the existing Princes Highway retail strip were implemented and improved into the immediate public domain. Footpaths were widened and layered with continuous retail activation, and an awning for maximum public amenity and commercial viability.
With ambitions for inclusion and access, View was designed with housing options for people with a disability, as afforded under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
