Carlton has always been an affluent suburban neighbourhood adjoining Melbourne city. Carlton prides itself on being one of the first suburbs set up in Melbourne with a strong sense of its Italian cultural heritage. Built in Australia’s prosperous gold rush period, many buildings are extravagant and lavish with decoration. Imagine the shock of the residents when part of their suburb was razed to the ground and replaced with low cost housing towers on a baron lawn area. All their history was demolished. This project presented the possibility of re-instating lost local character in a new and respectful strategy -uniting and integrating the area once again.
Redevelopment of these substantial parts of Carlton needs to accept the great diversity of architectural styles, building morphology and residential type as they exist today and ensure that there is the necessary intimacy of scale, diversity of style, variation in texture and materials in the development of the three sites. Importantly these sites to be truly memorable places must also be invested with a soul and a shared and evolved community spirit. These special attributes of place are often lost or diminished as places are discovered, gentrified and reshaped by new generations of residents, developers and decision makers and once lost are never recovered.
The proposed redevelopment proposes to:
_ Re-establishing street alignments and activity through landscaping and siting of buildings and uses to activate street edges.
_ Foster mixed-use development throughout the development that promotes street life and activity.
_ Provide a housing mix that facilitates demographic and household diversity.
_ Provide opportunities for start up business and diversification in retailing.
_ Provide opportunities for learning, socialising, recreation and play for people of all ages
_ Provide local opportunities for employment
Whilst distinctive as a result of these moves the design solution seeks to mesh the resolution seamlessly with the fabric and movement networks of the city, facilitating easy way-finding and access through and to the sites for all those visiting the neighbourhood. This renovation of the Carlton housing Estates comprises a series of urban design moves that we believe are essential to the reconnecting of site with place.
The new parks should bring the public that has been shut out for so long from this site into back to participate into the new life that this development proposes. More private open space should be provided for residents to interface with the street and the park maximising the open space available on site.
The existing towers should be redeveloped with a greater emphasis on amenity at the ground floors and a re-establishment of street edges around their base providing new community and retail spaces, decreasing the prominence and poor appearance of loading docks, parking and waste management facilities.
The architectural scale should vary over the sites becoming that of a traditional European street (5-6 storeys) in part. However the architectural treatment of the existing high rise and the lower rise buildings should create a common language of forms skilfully developed to incorporate the taller scale with the more modest forms by material usage, first and second stories treatment and landscaping.
The principle aim in redesigning these buildings should be to introduce some measure of ‘generosity’ to the spaces within and improve their street address.
:IN ASSOCIATION WITH MGS ARCHITECTURE
