Having your cake and EATing it on Brunswick East's Lygon Street
Another of Brunswick East's prime development lots is at planning, accounting for well known Middle Eastern eatery Rumi and an adjacent at grade car park.
Collingwood-based Architects EAT have designed the apartment block, arguably hitting an interesting balance between form and function. 116-118 Lygon Street is the latest project to show a heightened degree of design nous along the established apartment strip, potentially adding another strong addition to the higher density design dynamic which has swept along the northern reaches of Lygon Street.
Potentially in that the application has just reached advertising with Moreland City Council, and is some time away from a decision.
Expected to fall to development for some time, the application's proponent Deryan & Co Pty Ltd took the application to planning late in 2017. An island site, the application also absorbs the adjacent 205 Edward Street.
116-118 Lygon Street application summary
- Site area: 1,275sqm with 4 frontages
- Proposed: 8 level apartment block at 24.5m in height
- 47 apartments: 4 x 1BR, 37 x 2BR, 6 x 3BR
- 2 basement levels for 72 vehicles and 111 bicycles
- 5 retail tenancies: 275.4sqm
- New Rumi restaurant: 246.7sqm
- Ground floor communal area and rooftop terrace
Design basis
Architects EAT via their website note the arch is a symbol of a gateway, an entry, transition or landmark, thus the arched window was employed across the building. "We looked at the arched window prevalent in Brunswick’s eclectic neighbourhood and have transported it to the 21st century to match modern-day living."
The above is reinforced by planning agency Hansen Partnership who describe 116-118 Lygon Street in the following way:
The proposed building is of high architectural quality and incorporates a number of different elements to break up the form and ensure that it is an interesting building both at a pedestrian scale but also in the broad context of views from further north and south of Lygon Street and from the east and west of Edward Street.
At the podium level, the balconies will be vertically framed with steel metal fins and mesh balustrades to provide balcony protection, these have been designed in scalloped form along the Cocoa Jacksons Lane, Lygon and Edward Street.
Changing the Lygon form
Lygon Street's changing built form has in itself evolved over recent years. Earlier apartment developments were very much rudimentary in their exterior expression, heavily dependant upon precast elements.
Hansen Partnership notes that the swing to higher density "change has already started to occur and is notable along Lygon Street with the level of mixed-use buildings under construction or recently finished. Approved developments are largely representative of the outcomes anticipated under the DDO19, with various heights that fall within and outside of the discretionary height limit, dependant on context."
116-118 Lygon Street is the latest application to enforce the upswing in design quality along Lygon Street. More recent atypical designs to land Brunswick East's Lygon Street include 396 Lygon Street and 362-366 Lygon Street.
