JOURNAL/ October-November/2015

The cocktail bar, exclusively for guests of Dinner, takes elevated dress circle position overlooking the dining room and the entire proceedings. The private dining room is entered through a five metre high embossed leather pivoting doors, enjoying perfect views of both the kitchen and city.

The interior features two grand Old Master inspired photographs by Romas Foord, ‘Meat Fruit’ and ‘Snail Porridge’ extracted from the Historic Heston cookbook. The rich colour palette of the photographs inspired the decor, influencing the velvet and leather upholstery and timber choices for the custom designed table tops and waiter station joinery, set against a dark aubergine colour lacquered wall panelling.

Particular attention has been paid to the lighting. Bates Smart worked with lighting designers Electrolight to craft custom designed fittings and set the mood. Sumptuous pools of light have been created, focusing on the areas that guests inhabit, allowing details such as the food presentation, table tops, bar and kitchen, to emerge from the reduced darker background. The textured ceiling pattern is inspired by the Tudor rose, a motif used in the design of the chandeliers in the London restaurant. Ceramic jelly mould wall sconces from the London restaurant are installed above a sommelier station.

A custom designed graphic by English artist Dave McKean, depicting Australiana, surrounds the chef’s table overlooking the activity of the pass and the kitchen. Guests can watch the chefs brigade prepare their roasted pineapples on the custom rotisserie pulley system. The mechanical timepiece mounted adjacent to the show kitchen, designed by Robert Higgs, was inspired by the watchmakers of Greenwich and the royal kitchen of Tudor England.

Bates Smart Director, Kristen Whittle, explains the architectural vision: "Our strategy is to break down the site into individual components that provide scale and ordered horizontal pattern."

Double-height volumes define the three residential lobbies facing Albert Street, Eades Street and Victoria Parade. Each leads to residences that evoke the experience of an exceptional hotel.

A refreshed palette of materials with a timeless, yet contemporary, highly crafted architectural approach, will complement East Melbourne’s classical heritage precinct.

Low-level residences connect directly with the gardens with filtered views to the sky through the tree canopy. Wider horizontal planes define these residences and provide privacy from the street below.

Elevated penthouses are customised for discerning residents, with an abundance of glass, offering spectacular 360-degree panoramas over the gardens and CBD. 

For more information visit eastmelbourne.mirvac.com

"The main building fronting the campus mall is refurbished, with a new façade, and re-planned with academic and postgraduate research students located in research clusters to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing. The new wing connects to the old with a glazed stair providing vertical connectivity between levels. The long span structure of the new wing creates flexible teaching spaces, and has allowed a 350-seat lecture theatre below that opens out onto John Lions Garden. Spaces are provided to students for continuous learning, promoting an engaging campus.

"At ground level the new building activates the laneway and links it to the John Lions Garden. Undergraduate student spaces in the refurbished laboratory building open onto a newly covered outdoor lane creating a student activity space."

Guy Lake explains the design concept:

"We designed a series of buildings of varying height and setback to read as a 'village' with a strong sense of composition and identity."

Both apartments and communal spaces offer excellent amenity and high levels of connectivity to the wider fabric of Lane Cove.

The development integrates 237 apartments in four buildings and with a diverse range of size, including apartments, two storey terraces and penthouses all with abundant natural light, cross ventilation and outstanding treetop views.

"We workshopped a design solution that involved a miniature linear LED projector with a bi-symmetric beam optic located between the mesh and the print to graze up and down the artwork.

"The main challenge was balancing the quantity of light between the print and the mesh to ensure the correct amount of transparency and depth was achieved. If the mesh received too much light, the print receded into darkness.”

Bates Smart and Electrolight also collaborated on a number of bespoke decorative light fixtures for the restaurant.

Electrolight delivered the lighting for The Fat Duck's temporary home in the same space, referred to by Heston Blumenthal as the best restaurant lighting he had ever seen. 

While initially described as a building master plan, the document actually presents a number of alternate solutions to accommodate the Gardens' future requirements rather than a single proposal.

One of the key findings of the study is a recommendation that any new botanical developments should address the clarity of entry into the Gardens, ideally from both the Observatory site and the Yarra River in order to maintain the pristine landscape design of Guilfoyle and reinforce the underlying fabric of the Gardens.

In addition, a location for a much needed new Herbarium is proposed to house the scientifically significant botany collection started by Baron von Mueller in the nineteenth century and to provide an opportunity to celebrate botany with the public.

Former Bates Smart Chairman Roger Poole discusses Bates Smart McCutcheon's prolific contribution to the new genre of curtain-walled office buildings, he is joined by writers and academics including Conrad Hamann and Philip Goad. Watch the video here

Jeff recently chaired a session at the 2015 Hotelsworld Conference focusing on ‘What makes hotel developments work'.

Read here what international and Australian-based hotel developers are thinking about the latest industry trends and how they can take advantage of the opportunities using great design.

Today, the level of transparency achieved by the façade of a commercial building is a balancing act – a trade-off between the needs of tenants, environmental considerations and the execution of the architectural form.

The demand for transparency comes in large part from landlords and tenants. Within the corporate world, large expansive views are highly desirable and building owners and developers wish for their buildings to appeal to this market. When spectacular views of Sydney’s Harbour or Melbourne’s skyline are achievable, an uninterrupted view becomes even more important.

Equally, employers are increasingly concerned with the well-being of their staff, and access to natural light and views are important. An outlook that also captures views of the natural world or biophilic elements has an enhanced effect on well-being.

Conversely, a drive to reduce the environmental load, particularly solar heat gain, has the opposite effect on the building envelope. The imperative here is to make openings smaller, use shade elements and tinted glasses to stop the sun’s heat from penetrating the building and putting pressure on the environmental systems. Legislative requirements such as the Building Code of Australia strongly encourage this.

The variety of building form achieved by several of Bates Smart’s recent projects demonstrates how these factors, when combined with the building context, can be executed in a variety of ways.

The four faces of 177 Pacific Highway, Sydney are tailored to their aspects, with shading strategies adapted for each orientation, while maintaining the openness desired of a commercial high-rise. The building also responds to planning conditions restricting overshadowing of public places, its form pushing forwards and backwards as cantilevered volumes in response.

Deco, 155 Clarence Streeet, Sydney utilises sun shading to its new upper levels to create a very open façade, which delivers a crisp contrast to the elegant art deco building below.

Melbourne Dockland’s ATO building also utilises sun shading, but the effect here is of a sleekly defined cube.