15 minute read
MELBOURNE’S FORMIDABLE FRUIT
WORK BEARING FRUIT
With architectural inspiration from the fig, 380 Melbourne is one of the Australian city’s most multi-faceted and pedestrian-friendliest private projects
BY AL GERARD DE LA CRUZ
MASSIVE STRUCTURAL MEMBERS AND INTRICATE STEELWORKS WERE INTEGRAL TO THE 714-FOOT-TALL PROJECT. IMAGE CREDIT: ELENBERG FRASER
Across the millennia, the fig has held a fascination for artists, creatives, and storytellers. When designing 380 Melbourne, Australian design practice Elenberg Fraser recalled D.H. Lawrence’s poetry about the “very secretive fruit.”
The two-tower development, jutting above the heart of Melbourne’s central business district, encloses everything from apartments to Voco hotel rooms and a multitude of amenities, all under one architectural skin.
Interestingly for true blue Melburnians, the project serves as an extension of Timothy Lane, slicing through the site in the grand tradition of the city’s laneways. “We are interested in the fig because of how it contains thousands of little seeds,” says Matt Chamberlain, associate director at Elenberg Fraser. “We saw this large mixed-use project almost as a shell that contained a variety of different uses and an extensive building population of all sorts of different people.”
Hiap Hoe was originally set to develop the site in a joint venture with Melbourne-based family business Brady Property Group. The Singaporean developer purchased the site, a former commercial carpark, in 2013 and obtained a planning permit with Elenberg Fraser through town planner Urbis.
In 2016, Hiap Hoe exited the venture, with Elenberg Fraser staying on as architect. Brady Property Group “happily” acquired full ownership of the site, which spans an entire block between Lonsdale and Little Lonsdale Streets, reports Daniel Brady, sales director of Brady Property Group.
“From our proven experience, it is a high-demand location offering an unrivalled lifestyle for residents,” he says.
The commercial carpark that once stood on site proved a hindrance, blocking Timothy Lane from emerging out onto Lonsdale Street. The development eliminates this dead end, allowing pedestrians to continue down the laneway, flanked by open lobbies, F&B establishments, and retail spaces, through the towers’ podium. “In extending Timothy Lane, the development created a new thoroughfare, instilling new life to the neighbourhood,” says Brady.
But the site was unusually long and slender, challenging delivery of building materials to the centre of the project that began construction in 2018. The laneway extension itself challenged the contractors, assembled by the team of Brady Construction, since existing authority services in Timothy Lane impeded excavation. “At all stages of construction, we notified all the adjoining building owners of our construction program, including any street disruptions or closures, to establish a smooth relationship with all owners,” reports Brady.
Matching the scale of the streetscape, the podium builds up right to its boundaries with the surrounding narrow streets. With their wider setback, the two towers make for a grand urban gesture seen from many parts of the metropolis. Since many neighbouring buildings are heritage-listed, keeping nearby sites from being built out in the indefinite future, tower occupants are assured of great, unobstructed views, too.
“What I love about this project is that it works well at both an urban scale and a human scale,” says Chamberlain.
The podium was designed as a metaphor for the fig from pre-pollination to maturity. As seen from the laneway, the interior spaces subtly remind onlookers of fig seeds, from the geometries of the chandeliers and lighting installations to the colours of the stones.
THE BASE OF THE TOWERS APPEARS AS FLOATING, CANTILEVERED BOXES, FESTOONED WITH LANDSCAPING FROM THE EXTENDED LANEWAY BELOW TO THE PODIUM ROOFTOP ABOVE. IMAGE CREDIT: DYLAN JAMES
WE ARE INTERESTED IN THE FIG BECAUSE OF HOW IT CONTAINS THOUSANDS OF LITTLE SEEDS. WE SAW THIS LARGE MIXED-USE PROJECT ALMOST AS A SHELL THAT CONTAINED A VARIETY OF DIFFERENT USES AND AN EXTENSIVE BUILDING POPULATION OF ALL SORTS OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Expressed as individual volumes, the podium cantilevers in and out, creating sheltered spaces and allowing pockets of landscaping to poke in between the box-like structures. Higher floors would be facing the street’s tree canopies, for instance. Along the northern stretch of the laneway, a vertical garden spills six storeys down the podium wall, grow lights sustaining them.
“The idea was to represent each program as a single volume and shift them around to break down the delineation between public and private space,” says Chamberlain.
The development of the volumes involved unique structural solutions, including a giant diagonal steel brace to support a large, cantilevered volume from a mega column. Working with the structural engineers of Robert Bird Group, the design team realised the major cantilevers in such a way that the underlying structures are less noticeable. The volumes sport fine detailing around their top and bottom plates, the laneway pedestrians catching themselves reflected on their lustrous stainless steel undersides.
The proportions of the superstructure conformed with the unusually long, slender site. The 218-metre-high tower form is effectively two separate buildings adjoined together, with two vertical lift cores that result in highly efficient floor plates. The shorter South tower partly houses Australia’s first new-build Voco hotel while the rest of its floors and the entirety of the North tower are for residential use.
Working in a series of iterative workshops with Robert Bird, Elenberg Fraser sketched out towers that are longer than they are wide. “What that does structurally is that the broad face can catch a lot of wind load, which sort of wants to tip the building over,” says Chamberlain. “So, we needed to employ connected mega columns, which almost form an extension to the core to give the structure a lot of rigidity in an east-west direction. It’s almost catching a lot of the wind like a sail.”
The slenderness ratio of the towers ultimately benefits their interiors. The shallow perimeter-tocorridor depth maximises daylight penetration into the core.
The façade ripples out in a series of room-wide curved glass bay windows, the modules streaking diagonally across the façade in stacks of eight. These windows protrude up to one metre from the primary façade line, affording occupants
THE APARTMENT INTERIORS MIRROR THE PROTECTIVE, RESTORATIVE LAYER OF THE FIG SKIN AND THE THOUSANDS OF SEEDS IT HOUSES. IMAGE CREDIT: DYLAN JAMES
180-degree views and the feeling of stepping beyond the building edge.
Some famous hotel buildings helped inspire the architects to ideate the modularised façade, which is cleverly referenced in the shape of the door handles and other details of the property. “Just the spatial experience of sitting out in that bay window and projecting beyond the façade formed as an inspiration to us to apply modern construction techniques and see what we could do by just using that as a starting point,” says Chamberlain.
“The façade creates a unique spatial experience and helps differentiate this project from a lot of the other apartment projects globally.”
Every curved bay window was designed and engineered to have a different radius than the one above it, ensuring no aperture has a visual connection to neighbouring apartments. With technology imported from Germany, a digital bending machine was used to manufacture the 6,000 curved glass panels in China. The glass supplier also developed a special, low-E coating for the panels, whose dichroic nature allows the façade to shift colours from different angles. The building’s profile curves accordingly with the bay window system. Brady Construction employed a series of steel edge profiles and reused them up the building as the project progressed. “It’s fairly complex geometry, but achieved in a pretty simple way,” remarks Chamberlain.
With three static tower cranes to expedite the construction, 380 Melbourne was completed in 2021 at a cost of AUD300 million (USD191 million). After pandemicinduced delays, Voco Melbourne Central finally opened within the development in 2022, with general manager Erik Stuebe calling the property “a true original.”
The location is one true selling point. Not only have the units served as city pads for workers in the CBD but also as permanent homes, reports Brady.
With guests, residents, and the public at large to harvest its offerings, the project has truly borne fruit. “Over the last decade we’ve seen a real growth in the number of residents who are moving into the city,” says Chamberlain. “The attraction is just being amongst that vibrant city life.”
SEEDS OF PROGRESS
Consistency is one of 380 Melbourne’s strongest suits. Australian design practice Elenberg Fraser used the fig as a conceptual driver for a lot of the decision-making throughout all the interiors. “The syconium contains thousands of little seeds within it,” says Matt Chamberlain, associate director at Elenberg Fraser. “We saw that as a neat metaphor for a large mixed-use project of this scale and used the figure as a conceptual driver, particularly through the interior design.” Throughout all the common areas, the project uses plenty of natural stone products in pinks, reds, purples, and blacks—the colours of the fig. The stones, mostly quarried from India or, in the case of the Terrazzo, imported straight from Italy, can be seen over the indoor flooring, which transitions from one granite to another in coloration.
The apartments themselves are designed to be like a slice of the fruit. The palette is reminiscent of the natural tones of the fig’s skin as well as the fleshy white insides, complementing the engineered oak timber floorboards. Splashes and tones of colour burst out of drawer linings and are artfully concealed within the joinery.
“Even down to the smallest details, like inside the cupboards, we used the colourations of the fig,” says Chamberlain.
COMMUNAL AREAS SPREAD OUT IN TEXTURAL REDS AND PINKS, AS IF TO MIMIC THE INSIDES OF THE FIG. IMAGE CREDIT: DYLAN JAMES
Circle of trust
Head of the advisory group at JLL Indonesia Vivin Harsanto aims to ensure that her firm remains a reliable partner for clients as they attempt to negotiate the postpandemic world
BY BILL CHARLES
JAKARTA MAY BE SET TO LOSE ITS STATUS AS CAPITAL OF INDONESIA, BUT IT WILL REMAIN THE COUNTRY’S MOST ACTIVE HUB FOR PROPERTY INVESTMENT IN THE FORTHCOMING DECADES
Like many countries post-pandemic, Indonesia is working to pivot economically to a position of stronger growth following the challenges of the past few years.
And in her role as head of the advisory group at JLL Indonesia, Vivin Harsanto oversees research and strategic consulting while advising on property development and investment in both the public and private sectors. Harsanto sees a renewed emphasis on wellness and sustainability, along with technological innovation and recognition of a changing business landscape, as key drivers influencing the country’s real estate markets.
Harsanto, who joined JLL Indonesia in 2008, has 25 years of experience in the real estate industry, working on projects across all segments and in most major cities throughout Indonesia. She is an expert on development strategies, asset optimisation, and investment advisory, in addition to strategies related to the infrastructure sector.
Looking to the year ahead, Harsanto says about her role: “We will continue to help shape the future of real estate by providing advice to our clients and remain a trusted partner for them in all aspects of their real estate needs, whether that’s their need for valuation planning, marketing, property management, and investments or technology in the property sector.
“We also continuously promote the importance of sustainability, aligning with global and government initiatives,” she adds. “Above all, we want to ensure that health and wellness post-pandemic will be a priority moving forward.”
Indonesia’s property market has been quite strong after a difficult period, with the economy expected to recover and grow rather quickly post-Covid.
The main drivers of the recovery are a growing population
PRIME SHOPPING MALLS IN STRATEGIC LOCATIONS IN JAKARTA AND OTHER CITIES HAVE RECOVERED WELL FOLLOWING THE EASING OF PANDEMIC RESTRICTIONS
and growing middle class, along with foreign and domestic direct investments and infrastructure developments. Each sector has its current state and character.
Office inquiries across various sectors, apart from active technology companies, have started to pick up since the start of the year. Tenants have cautiously resumed executing their real estate plans, with flight-to-quality, consolidation, and relocation as the central theme driven by cost savings.
Prime shopping malls in strategic locations have enjoyed healthy foot traffic with the easing of social restrictions that allowed them to operate at 100% capacity. F&B and fast-fashion occupiers remain the most active retail segments in 2022.
Meanwhile, the weak demand for condominiums in Jakarta has continued with potential buyers—especially investors—still cautious about buying. On the contrary, the landed housing sector has continued to be active, as can be seen from buyers’ responses to the launches of new products of various types.
As has been the case since the beginning of the pandemic, the need for modern warehouses has stemmed from e-commerce, third-party logistics, and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), all of which continue to expand and lease space in greater Jakarta. Last but not least, data centre players remain active in developing facilities, not only on the outskirts of Jakarta, but also within the city centre.
What might the next decade look like in Indonesia’s property market?
We expect the government to focus on infrastructure and public transportation that increase connectivity, including new MRT and LRT lines and toll roads.
Together with the private sector, there will be more initiatives in sustainability and more advanced and innovative efforts to innovate technologically. The office market will see changes in tenant behaviour and priorities such as wellness and sustainability—both supported by technology.
INDONESIA’S OPENNESS TO DIGITAL NOMADS WILL BENEFIT PRIME REMOTE WORKING LOCATIONS SUCH AS BALI
Retail will be more experiential as merchandise will be easily compared online. Therefore the retail experience and ambiance will be key. Automation in modern warehouses and smart homes will continue to advance. New infrastructure developments will create new public transportation hubs. Non-traditional real estate sectors could also potentially grow. We have seen this in the region, in areas such as urban logistics, data centres, self-storage, life science, and others.
How do you see the luxury segment of the real estate market, which has been hit especially hard by the pandemic, posting a recovery? What will help support that recovery?
Indonesia’s luxury segment has been fairly quiet since 2015-16 with the new regulation on luxury taxes. Some adjustments have been made to those taxes. However, the pandemic has made them less effective, especially in the condominium market.
The luxury segment relies heavily on macroeconomic conditions and confidence levels. As some buyers in this segment see real estate as an investment, buyers are cautious when making purchases. They compare with other investment instruments to see how they could benefit from them. However, some buyers are also end-users. This has less effect on the economy, but more on alternate options, such as landed houses. We have seen new luxury landed residential units being sold, which means that spending power remains, but only for the right product.
The recovery of this segment mainly relies on the confidence level of potential buyers toward developers—whether it relates to the concept, product, construction progress, and payment terms offered.
What’s the long-term outlook for Jakarta, in your opinion, with the capital expected to move to Borneo?
Certainly, Jakarta will retain its status as Indonesia’s business centre, as with other cities in mature markets. The Jakarta government has created the city to be the centre of business and trading in the national, regional, and global economy. It will continue to be the driving force behind the economy.
How might Indonesia’s attempts to snare the digital nomad market with a new visa impact the property market?
The digital nomad is about millennials and youngsters who combine leisure and work. This new initiative could positively impact the tourism market, especially in Bali. It will expand a new type of demand on top of typical tourists, increasing
AN EMPHASIS ON INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT SUCH AS METRO SYSTEMS IS LIKELY TO EASE TRAFFIC CONGESTION IN JAKARTA
the number of visitors to Bali. From January to August this year, there were around 3,000 visitors who applied for digital nomad visas, mostly coming from Russia, the US, and the UK.
These millennials and younger generations will drive new demand for leased residential, such as hotels and villas since they could stay for up to six months. Other than that, co-working spaces will be needed to accommodate these new types of visitors, as well as F&B services, such as cafes and restaurants.
What do you think is the importance of the Asia Property Awards as a benchmark for quality in the region?
Since it launched 16 years ago, the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards series has grown to become the biggest real estate awards program in Asia Pacific. One thing that makes the program successful is its credibility. We believe in being free to enter, offering fair judgment for all, and a transparent process. Being recognised by this award entails a prestigious achievement for the participants.
Through this program, participants also can learn and see ideas and innovations in other countries and ultimately up their own game in the industry. How is the global economic situation—with generally high inflation and rising interest rates—impacting Indonesia’s property market? What is being done to help support markets?
Indonesia must surmount three challenges that will come with the threat of global recession, which is expected to grip the world in 2023, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia has said. These challenges to the investment sector include political stability, policy consistency, and people’s purchasing power.
Due to rising inflation, Bank Indonesia might increase the benchmark interest further, which could impact the residential market. Buyers could take a longer time in their decision-making process and look for more affordable homes, which consequently might mean a different location or smaller size.
Favourable demographics influence the outlook. Strong consumer spending prospects, thanks to a rapidly growing middle class, will sustain GDP growth. Another critical factor is a projection of a solid expansion of investment.
