Here’s the query. What can be done to
profitably develop a historic corner property
on the waterfront strip of a low-rise, rapidly
gentrifying beach suburb? Here are some complications. The site is
fronted by a crumbling, heritage-listed hotel
that’s cherished by locals as a music venue.
Also, the council has an 18 metre (six
storey) height limit. Because those parameters apply to many
commercial properties around Australia’s
coast, it’s interesting to consider the
responses offered by seven firms of
architects recently involved in an ideas
competition run by Becton, a Melbourne
developer, for its Esplanade Hotel site
opposite the St Kilda pier and sea baths.
The entrants were Nation Fender Katsalidis
(winner), Denton Corker Marshall, Billard
Leece, Ashton Raggatt McDougall, Alsop &
Stormer (London) with Ross Ramus, Robert
Peck von Hartel Trethowan and Nelson
Architects (an Arizona office). All their schemes—apparently
coincidentally—ignored the height limit to
propose between one and three towers
soaring up to seven times higher than
nearby buildings. Some first stage concepts
also suggested demolishing the ‘Espy’ hotel,
although the final schemes retained its
Victorian front section, wrapped the site
edges with low-rise and placed the towers
at the rear of the site. Why did all seven entrants blatantly thumb
their noses at the City of Port Phillip
Council’s planning controls for this area? A
Becton director, Hamish MacDonald, denies
that the company ordered tower
concepts—“our brief was not prescriptive
… we wanted to encourage participants to
develop their own ideas.” However, some competitors say that they entered with the
expectation that residents’ objections, and
DA resistance from the council, would be
usurped by the approval of Victoria’s pro-development
Planning Minister, Robert
Maclellan. According to one participant, “we
got the impression that the Minister had
already told Becton that the way to justify
him approving a tower development would
be to appoint a good architect and sell the
design as something desirable. We certainly
knew that they wanted high-rise.” To judge the entries, Becton appointed
architect Evan Walker, architectural
publisher Haig Beck, local restaurateur Don
Fitzpatrick and entertainer Ronnie Burns. In
planning principles recorded last February
(the winning scheme was announced in
July), this jury decided that: The Espy’s front section and Pollington
Street wing should berenovated (not
restored), as part of a new perimeter of
buildings to the height of the existing
three/four storey hotel. | Cafés and shops should be provided
along the Upper Esplanade frontage. The
side and rear site boundaries should form
“an active edge” as a “low-rise residential
crust sympathetic in scale to the adjacent
existing two-storey street frontages”. The residential tower should have a
“landmark/beacon/lighthouse character” to
emphasise the site’s significance in a
metropolitan context, and the design should
terminate the axis of St Kilda pier.
Top A view of the katsalidis proposal, seen from the Esplanade. Above Ashton Raggat Mcdougall’s three-tower scenario.From the six we’ve seen of the seven
submissions (not the American scheme), the
winning entry by Nation Fender Katsalidis
appears the most clever and beneficial to a
developer. According to Becton’s Hamish
MacDonald, it “addressed all of the criteria developed by the panel, but more than
anything the panel believed the design said
‘St Kilda’ … the designers evidenced an
affinity with the culture of St Kilda”. To a jury inclined to support towers despite
the height limit, there are many attractions
to the NFK proposal. It stacks up a great
deal of floor space (far more than
Alsop/Ramus) in containers which look
stylish (more elegant than the Peck von
Hartel and Billard Leece submissions and
less likely than DCM’s to be opposed as
fascist-modernist), and without appearing
obviously greedy (compared with Ashton
Raggatt McDougall’s haphazard trio). A key strategy is the provision of two tall
buildings in a way which implies that there’s
only one tower: a gracefully articulated
elliptical column which appears slender,
thus less shadowy, for its 125-metre height.
Beside this would be a squareish block,
about 60 metres high, which is said to be
“replacing a missing tooth” between three
slightly lower blocks of units of the 1960s
and 70s. At the front of the site, the old
Espy’s facade is opened up for cafés. New
buildings, higher than the hotel’s ridgeline,
define the lesser street edges. Because the main tower will be illogically
imperial in relation to St Kilda’s low-rise and
egalitarian character—and will be a red rag
to other developers—a residents’ group
called the Esplanade Alliance is objecting
(300 people attended a protest during the
October comment phase). The council is
due to make its call in December—and is
definitely resisting the height. Sceptics predict that Minister Maclellan will
virtuously lop off a few dozen metres as
part of his approval conditions about March. Davina Jackson edits Architecture Australia. |
