Creating Wentworth Point’s Town Centre: Architecture & Place
This article is part 3 of a 5 part series. Previously we introduced the Wentworth Point Marinas's Urban Design, as well as Bennelong Bridge.
Architecture & Place
The success of Scott Carver’s ‘place thinking’ at Wentworth Point Marinas is also evident in the scale of streets, the diversity of architectural styles and types, vigorous public and private landscaping and the careful location of social amenities, all culminating in a vibrant new neighbourhood replete with civic amenity.
Vibrant new neighbourhood
Scott Carver’s lead design architect, Hon Diec, points to the many visual design devices used to create the charisma of the place, “We ensured that each side of each city block addressed the scale and setting of the streets they addressed. Moreover, we made sure we didn’t repeat the style of any of the buildings. Now that it’s possible to walk the many streets of the town centre it is hard to imagine that one firm designed it all.” Hon chalks this achievement up as an important cultural milestone for his firm, “This is a big breakthrough for us all at Scott Carver, rather than pushing a style as our brand, we have collaborated to generate an authentic diversity, tuned to the place itself.”
Saul Moran, design architect at Scott Carver for the earlier stages of Wentworth Point Marinas, now Development Manager for Billbergia, has evolved from designer to client in the life of the project. Saul says, “While every building is of high quality, the more powerful feeling now is in the nature of the streets”. Conscious throughout that Billbergia and Scott Carver have been designing a little city rather than a suburb, he says, “We knew we were compressing the streets to create energy. On the edges of the town centre we created relaxed, landscaped setbacks but in the core we have placed elegant, larger buildings on their boundaries with the library & community centre, pocket parks, cafes and restaurants activating the core from their edges and generating a sense of importance about the place.”
The interplay of towers and lower buildings generates contrast and excitement. Towers forms are interesting on their own when viewed from afar and when viewed objectively from the adjacent street. However, it is their participation with the whole mix of architectural effects at lower levels that cements their importance in the townscape. The scale of all of the buildings has been tuned to viewpoints from footpaths such that rounded modern towers act as background elements, contrasting with the visually busier lower buildings and landscaping. Nowhere do taller buildings feel overbearing.
Design devices used by Scott Carver include a careful mix of landscaping in the public domain as well as a diverse range of courtyards in the core of each block. Along the streets, the pedestrian experience was prioritised. Plants in private courtyards have been located to hang over the footpaths and combine their effect with street trees and landscaped edges.
An overriding design challenge was the manufacturing of diversity in facades even though the apartments behind might be similar. Rather than unifying the projects into one overall aesthetic, the illusion of separate buildings of smaller a scale was used to calibrate the journey along streets.
Streets as social places
Crucial to the creation of streets as social places, was the tuning of the height of buildings to the width of streets as well as the articulation of facades to direct the eye from different vantage points.
Footbridge Boulevard, for example, is a grand street with 8-storey buildings flanking its edges and defining its scale. Along each footpath, cladding the buildings near ground level with stone enriches the pedestrian experience, combined with detail around entrances and stepped gardens.
By contrast, Half Street is flanked by 4-storey buildings, which define a narrower public way with more compressed gardens and facades subdivided to appear low.
Hill Road, a grand arrival boulevard connecting the whole peninsula, is built only along one of its edges. This has enabled a more monumental scale to be employed, still articulated to reinforce pedestrian experiences. Large gestures such as the red building on Footbridge Boulevard help to signal an important town centre entry to motorists moving at speed.
Towers that meet the ground plane in the core are softened in their forms but built without setbacks to induce energy through compression along footpaths. A distinct zone was delineated to capture and articulate activity where retail activity populates the edges. This was done to dramatise activity when viewed from across the road and to distract the eye from the towers above.
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