Springfield, Australia.
Our proposal for these 24 apartments on a beautiful site on the renowned Brookwater Golf Course, was successful in an limited design competition. The site is ideal with a northern aspect overlooking a small lake and the open spaces and retained bushland at the first and second holes fairways. This project, intended to set a new benchmark in quality apartment living at Brookwater, is designed to maximise the site’s natural advantages for a relaxed and casual sub-tropical lifestyle.
In response to the shape and fall of the site, the plans and floor levels are staggered with a combination of 2 and 3 bedroom apartments are arranged in 4 levels over, all with 2 carparks and a golf buggy park in a stone faced semi basement. An important aspect of our proposal was that all apartments living and master bedroom spaces would enjoy the view. Each apartment has a wide frontage of just over 9 metres, with a very comfortable balcony or terrace, which enjoys the view and northern aspect. This ensures that there are no secondary quality addresses and maintains the highest value for all apartments.
The masterplan arranges the apartments in 3 groups of 2 per floor, allowing direct stair and elevator access to all apartments, while enabling all available Gross Floor Area to be private and within the apartment title. This arrangement also ensures that all apartments will benefit from excellent cross ventilation and that the floor levels can step across the site to minimise excavation and respond to the natural rhythm of the topography. This planning strategy is further expressed externally where, rather than appearing as a single larger building, the expression of the typical apartments, stepping in plan and in section across the site, allows their reading as a small community of separate buildings, more in scale and more discreet within the tall eucalypt and dry sclerophyll forest in which they sit. Our unconventional design approach offers a delivers a higher value and more consistent quality of living, very particular to the site, than had been otherwise imagined.
