Alfred Residences

The Client’s Brief was to optimise the yield on the site, providing compact, two bedroom apartment accommodation, nominally for the first home buyers’ market. 

The site was challenging, long and narrow, tapering to a point at the far end, with an appreciable slope down from the street. Careful consideration was needed to provide the desired two-storey accommodation and parking while keeping within the allowable building envelope. The development was envisaged as an elongated tube, sitting on a series of solid plinths, with gaps for parking between, with framed views at either end and viewing ports along the length.   

There are eleven apartments, each with one parking space. Pedestrian access to the apartments is via a pathway along the southern edge of the site and there are three separate stairwells, to avoid long corridors.   At the lower level, the apartments have their own semi-enclosed, north-facing terrace courtyards and on the upper level, these become semi-enclosed decks (the viewing ports).

The lower floor is clad in a composite, weatherboard look cladding, painted dark to make it recessive in appearance and the upper floors were sheathed in light-coloured, vertical seam metal cladding, which flows over and onto the roof, creating a sense of continuous cover and singular form.