This project’s client brief included the key objective to deliver cost effective and ‘price sensitive’ apartments on this site. The apartments will be pitched at younger professionals and couples, older singles and couples as well as investors. A more affordable apartment type translates into tightly controlled planning and overall floor areas across all apartment types to deliver good value for money.
The long east-west axis of the site facilitates a simple northern-oriented and ‘single-loaded’ planning concept for the proposed multi-residential development. The optimal northern orientation along the site’s Princess Road frontage forms the basis of a very simple planning diagram in which every apartment enjoys largely uninterrupted views and northern orientation.
The single-loaded, linear organisation of the apartments provides excellent cross ventilation capacity that is further enhanced through the provision of naturally ventilated and day-lit ‘bridges’ that provide access to apartments on each level. The bridges are detached from the apartment building proper to create a more private relationship between the semi-public space of the bridge walkways and the apartment entrances.
The detached bridges create an atrium-like space that is weather-screened to the south with a series of translucent polycarbonate screens. The screens provide both weather protection and privacy to the adjacent apartment building but enable both daylight and ventilation of the atrium space.
