Design to fit the brief
The Brickworks Living Building Challenge® design competition whetted Frasers Property Australia’s appetite to do something truly remarkable at the Burwood Brickworks site.
The principles of the LBC® gelled well with the company’s sustainability pillars. The question turned from should we build the world’s most sustainable shopping centre? to why wouldn’t we? An LBC® building would deliver on the company’s triple bottom imperatives:
1. Environmental sustainability
2. Social sustainability
3. Financial sustainability
Frasers Property had already appointed leading architectural firm NH Architecture to Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre. The firm was tasked with a difficult new brief to design a retail centre that would raise the bar for building standards. And it had to do it within the same building footprint that had received initial development approval.
NH Architecture’s response to the new brief was to look to Melbourne’s market hall history. It repurposed the concept of a factory shed as the foundation of the building in form and spirit, while embracing the essential elements of the LBC®’s analogous flower.
There are four entry points to the central market hall, inviting people into the space from every vantage point. Expressed materials such as steel, brick, timber and concrete in the building structure pay homage to the site’s industrial heritage.
The building’s biophilic design uniquely considers human scale and offers consumers a rare sensory experience, where the outside is brought in. The building’s sawtooth roof serves the purpose of capturing sunlight and water, essential to the operation of the building, while also providing natural light and views of weather flows to the retail spaces below – unlike other shopping centres.
The extensive use of skylights and solar tubes offer self-sustaining ventilation and natural light into every tenancy – offering an enhanced indoor environment quality for both shoppers and staff, as well as maintaining essential connections with nature from within. These were extremely challenging to co-ordinate, particularly as the leasing process (and therefore determining specific retailers in specific locations) ran concurrently with the design and construction timeframe.
While ambitious in sentiment, the design is also beautiful, robust, organic, functional and environmentally aware.
Other key design contributors for Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre were:
• Russell & George – Interior Design
• Joost Bakker – Urban Farm Creative Consultant
• Zwei Architecture – Urban Farm Restaurant and Café
• Electrolight – Feature Lighting
• Hacer Group - Builder
• NH Architecture
• ADP - Services Engineers
• Tract - Town Planning
• Group GSA - Landscape Architects
• Spencer Group - Structural Engineers
• CJ Arms - Hydraulic Consultant
• Aquacell - MABR provider
• Cundall Green Star Consultant
• Delta Q - Independent certifier
• Mandy Nicholson and Balarinji - Public Artist and Public Art Consultancy
• Strategic Spaces – Signage
• International Living Future Institute
• Living Future Institute of Australia
Putting a plan in place
Inspiring concept drawings are one thing, gaining planning approvals to bring the dream to reality are quite another. What happens when your ideas move beyond what current regulations allow?
Mostly, it meant delays. Development approval for the entire Burwood Brickworks site was eventually signed off by Whitehorse City Council on 23 May 2018. This allowed Frasers Property’s retail team to push ahead with planning approval for the shopping centre; and try to push past planning regulations that had never before considered for such an environmentally ambitious building.
Negotiations with Whitehorse City Council took six months longer than anticipated, mostly because landscaping formed such an integral part of the project. Details such as plant species; planting depth of vegetation on the facade, inside the building and on the urban farm; landscape maintenance and harvesting; pedestrian accessibility and even the lifespan of plant species had to be negotiated. Parking provisions were reconsidered to factor in the requirements of a 2,500sqm urban farm as opposed to 2,500sqm of retail space.
To overcome regulatory hurdles, Frasers Property applied for a planning permit for the retail centre with significantly lower sustainability targets than it planned to deliver. Once the permit was granted, certification requirements for the LBC® served as the ambitious benchmark Frasers Property would aim to achieve.
Finishing touches
There are many subtle yet distinctive interior design features that set Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre apart from other retail centres.
Open your senses as you enter the building from every entry point and you might hear the sounds of birds or indigenous song, or you might even detect a smell of citrus.
The interior design by Russell & George has used each entrance as a sensory portal with fragrances and sounds that encourage connection. Each entry zone is similar but has a slightly different treatment.
Each entrance has an oculus, a reflective shimmery space, with a soundscape concentrated on this zone. The contrast between the entrance and market hall in the centre of the lower floor is deliberately exaggerated, drawing the eye upwards and creating a feeling of elation. Each entrance is designed to encourage a sense of belief, which in turn creates a sense of connection.
This is perhaps most evident in the striking design of the travelator space from the underground car park. Suspended pieces of salvaged timber form an arch and transform the space into a cave-like experience. Scents and acoustics add to the experience. Entering and leaving the centre are experienced differently. The travelator installation is made of form-ply, which is black on one side and raw timber on the other, so you enter in a cathedral of timber and leave under a dark star-lit sky.
There are other details too that tell a story. Adorning the walls of the stairwell that lead to the second floor are the stories behind the salvaged timber featured throughout the building. Timber has been saved from former Abbotsford garment factories and a car auction house that was once tucked beneath the West Gate Freeway while timber joists have come from the old wool sheds that once lined Sydney’s harbourfront.
A trip to the toilet will even delight. A large central communal wash basin with all taps, dryers and mirrors suspended from above. A reflective ceiling gives the appearance of being at the bottom of a well. The are unisex bathroom facilities so children and parents of any gender, as well as everyone else, can wash their hands together at a safe distance from one another – a contemporary solution but also a tribute to cultures where bathing is a ritual to be celebrated.
