Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning Re-imagining Fitzroy

Re-imagining Fitzroy


 

Ideas for Atherton Gardens - Exhibition at Fitzroy Library 22/8-21/9/08

 

WE ARE SEEKING YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT OUR IDEAS!

Please leave your comments. We are interested in knowing what people think about these ideas for research purposes. Click on the The Site or Preliminary Site Strategy / Final Designs below that interest you and move the mouse over the images that you find. You can select images to be enlarged and then make comments on them.

 

The Site

  • Fitzroy, Atherton Gardens and the Town Hall Precinct
    These images show mappings of aspects Fitzroy's built form and land use that was conducted as part of the studio design process. The whole of Fitzroy is covered by a Heritage Overlay because of its historical significance. Designing in such a sensitive context requires a good understanding of how the place works in order to image future possibilities that make positive contributions.

Project A: Replaces all 4 towers with Low-rise Buildings

  • Preliminary Site Strategy
  • Final Design
    The focus is on the connection between Atherton Gardens and the Town Hall precinct. The car park and other barriers are replaced with pedestrianised links, public BBQ facilities, a new soccer pitch and community vegetable gardens that integrate the primary school and Cubbiee adventure playground with a new creche, education centre and residential accommodation.
  • Video Flythroughs

Project B: Retains and Upgrades All 4 Towers

Project C: Retains the 2 Towers on Napier St

  • Preliminary Site Strategy
  • Final Design
    AGP [Atherton Gardens Plaza]: The final design focusses on one of the new plazas on Brunswick St. that forms an important public space and interface between the proposals to redevelop Atherton Gardens and the surrounding neighbourhood.
  • Video Flythroughs


The Site Original Ground Plan


RE-IMAGINING FITZROY: Ideas for Atherton Gardens

This is a studio in the Master of Architecture program at the Melbourne School of Design.

Studio Leader: Ian Woodcock
Students: Rohan Appel, Kate Sutton, Jessica Kaires, Helen Chen, Ruth Whitaker, Rochelle Skurnik, Natalie Kirschner, Samantha Levy.

The impetus for the studio is that to make cities more sustainable, development must be intensified around public transport. Fitzroy is an inner-Melbourne suburb that has excellent access to public transport and the central city. The Atherton Gardens precinct is a major opportunity to explore what intensification in the inner city might look like.

This website illustrates some possible futures for the Atherton Gardens housing estate and the precinct around Fitzroy Town Hall, all of which involve an intensification of use – more housing as well as other land uses.

The site currently comprises 800 apartments of public housing in four 22-storey towers. The aim of the project is to increase the amount of public housing on the site by mixing it with community and private housing, along with non-residential uses. A fundamental principle for all the proposals is that no residents would have to move off the site. The doubling of the dwellings on the site allows for a much greater range of housing choices, so that single people as well as large families can be appropriately accommodated.

Existing facilities such as the soccer pitch, the Cubbies adventure playground and the community veggie garden have all been retained and enhanced, though in some cases, relocated. The loss of ground level open space within the housing estate has been balanced by the addition of private open spaces for most dwellings, with smaller-scale and genuine public open spaces related to walkable networks of streets. The traditional strip precincts of Brunswick and Gertrude St's would be extended along the frontages of the site. ESD and sustainability principles inform the site layouts and the placement of open spaces, the form of new buildings, retrofitting of existing buildings, along with water management and energy generation systems on site.

 

Your Privacy

All comments will be treated in the strictest confidence. Any comments received will be stored in a secure database at the University of Melbourne, only accessible to the studio leader. If material submitted by the public is used in any way associated with this project, the source of the comments will remain anonymous. However, we have asked for your contact details so that should any comments be of particular interest we may follow up your ideas with you at a later date, with your consent.

 

Your comments will go to the studio leader:

Mr. Ian Woodcock,

Research Fellow,

Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning,

University of Melbourne.

E: iswo@unimelb.edu.au
T: 8344 0363.

You are welcome to contact him directly.

 

By submitting your comments you acknowledge that you have done so voluntarily. If you wish to withdraw your comments at any time, please email the studio leader as listed above.

If you have any concerns about this website, please contact the Executive Officer, Human Research Ethics at the University of Melbourne

T: 8344 2073
F: 9347 6739 and cite the following project reference No. 0828792.1

 

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