Review Leon van Schaik Photography John Gollings Urbane Melbourne professionals move into St Kilda apartments designed by Nonda Katsalidis. Our reviewer road tests an examplar of gentrification.
‘Berlin has 3.4 million people and covers 833 square kilometres,“ intoned the ‘Berlin 2000’ tour guide, completing a litany of statistics that also included the cubic metres of soil being removed by canal from 8000 building sites and the cubic metres of building material arriving by rail.
These statistics of Berlin’s area and population chimed uncannily in my mind with Melbourne’s 3.4 million people over 6000 sq kms; neatly demonstrating an effect of living in five-storey walk-up apartments: the same population in one-fifth of the area. Barcelona, with its 8-12 storey apartments, is of course the most dense of cities, and perhaps for that reason is also the most continuously vibrant, though climate and cultural attitudes also have impacts. Relatively quiet in comparison, Rotterdam—a very young city (constructed mainly since 1946) has a little less density than Berlin, proving that such compact living is not merely attributable to ancient histories. The street life that is the joy of these cities sparkles in limited areas of Melbourne, which has been undergoing a sustained densification program associated with that life. Encouraged by the state and city, this phenomenon is meeting a seemingly pent-up demand for spatial unity of work, recreation and habitation. At the UIA’s Barcelona Congress, Willem Jan Neutelings described how Dutch building regulations have removed the need to heat buildings; energy-saving measures being so effective that cooling is now the issue all-year long. In Europe, domestic buildings account for 50 percent of pollution (industry and transport equally produce the remainder), but new standards aim to drastically cut this. Alas, such intentions are far from evident in Australia, where retiring to 40 hectares of bush and burning it in a log fire is still the all-too-popular notion of ecologically balanced living. Australian regulations of thermal and acoustic transmissions are primitive by current European standards and a ‘caveat emptor’ mentality governs what is built—much of it crudely sub-standard. This careless approach recently achieved symbolic status in Melbourne when neo-classical detailing applied to a tilt-slab edifice fell with a polystyrene whimper into the street. In this deregulated environment, the only hope of the purchaser lies in the professional integrity of individual architects such as Nonda Katsalidis, who has allied himself to developers with visions of city dwelling that encompass qualities of thermal and acoustic control and design that are well in advance of Australian standards and norms. Katsalidis’ planning draws upon the commonsense layouts of better 19th century housing in Melbourne. In his work, you will not find the labyrinthine access passageways and internal corridors that characterise so many of the new, denser developments. ‘Feature’ staircases and surfboard fittings do not dominate the livable space. Planning does not compromise use—you need not fear that viewing neighbours in their jacuzzi will alarm your dinner guests. All the above abuses have been observed in recent housing in Melbourne. Disturbingly often, architects design as if the lexicon of housing has to be reinvented from scratch in a painful (to the consumer) trial-and-error process that produces buildings which defy any but the most nomadic of habitations. By contrast, Katsalidis moves with the calm knowledge that there are precedents that work. He is also informed by a clear understanding of lives that can be led in the inner city—derived from family experiences over a long period. And he lives in his own design—the pioneering Melbourne Terrace [AA July/August 1994]. This year, after six months of increasingly desperate searching, we moved into Katsalidis’ new St Leonards Apartments at St Kilda, and I can report on a limited ‘road test’ basis. On December 22 at midday, sun did not enter the living spaces. On June 17 at midday, it flooded them. Two neighbours have held parties—only when doors were opened were we aware of these. Our space has accepted the personal accumulations of a lifetime with ease and (I hope) some grace. Others feel the same responsiveness in the quietly recessive interior spaces. Light changes the qualities of the rooms as the day passes. We are ‘plugged in’ to one of Melbourne’s most vital strips, even if existing habitués grumble about gentrification. St Leonards Apartments Stage 1 (Stage 2 is under construction) consists of over 40 apartments in one, two and three-storey configurations. Car parking and storage are secured in a semi-basement. Gardens or generous terraces are provided to all. While the building is still ‘running in’—when will builders make this process as redundant for buildings as it is for cars?—it seems pretty good. Of course it will take thousands of such apartment blocks to shift Melbourne’s land-hungry culture—and it is not at all certain that this would necessarily be better for the environment than a ‘permaculture’ revolution of land-use in the suburbs. But if we do wish to work with the realities of urban Australia—already one of the world’s most urbanised countries—we have to take Katsalidis-style apartments to our hearts and forsake the fallacy of ‘touching the earth lightly’ again and again and again until the planet is completely lost to us; leaving nature as a theme park surrounded by suburbs. This last was a recurring nightmare at the UIA’s ‘96 conference in Barcelona in July. Professor Leon van Schaik, Dean of Environmental Design and Construction at RMIT, wrote from Europe after the UIA’s Barcelona conference, for which he helped to plan the program. ST LEONARDS APARTMENTS, MELBOURNE
Architect Katsalidis—project team Dean Cass, Nigel Fitton, Holger Fresse, Kathie Hall, Nonda Katsalidis, Robert Kolak, Bill Krotiris, David Morrison, Monica Shanley, Jacqui Wagner. Construction Manager Corsair Construction. Project Adviser Yencken Project Services. Town Planner HHA Henshall Hansen & Associates. Structural Engineer Nader Consulting Engineers. Services Engineer Andrew Ligard & Associates. Civil Engineer Scott Wilson Irwin Johnson. Landscape Architect Barry Murphy. Building Certifier Gardner Group. Client St Leonards Development Group. | 
