The goal of this private comprehensive residential development of 34 dwellings was the creation of a calming urban living environment respectful of and in harmony with an existing historic neighborhood while responding to the dynamics of an environment defined by distinctive natural elements.
We were challenged by these contrasting realities: a protected urban residential street and river bed part of a linear park, to relate our architectural concept to them, functionally and aesthetically. This relationship is established not only by architectural language but by the incorporation of public paths that connect the two extreme ends of the site into the development’s master plan.
The development of an appropriate architectural language which followed a documentation of the entire architecture of Gladstonos street was also influenced by our awareness of certain movements which related to or bookended the modern era such as the De Stijl, the Constructivists and Bauhaus.
The developed architectural language is expressed beginning with the four semi-detached three level town houses with front and rear gardens and individual pools on Gladstonos Street and is continued within the stepped in plan and profile four storey 3 bedroom mid-site apartment complex with garden level individual pools. This language is redefined by the plans and curvilinear facades of the riverside apartments some duplexes, that open with their deep shaded verandas on to the riverbed.
All resident parking and utility spaces are concealed below grade.
We aspire as architects of this development, for it to be appreciated as to how one can integrate without emulating some past, real or imagined, a contemporary architecture successfully into a sensitive existing historic urban fabric.