High Street Apartments is Gardiner Architects’ first high-rise multi-residential project. Located in Thornbury, Melbourne, the project is a mixed-use building, with thirteen apartments above a ground floor carpark and restaurant fronting High Street.
© Rory Gardiner
Inside the apartments, the palette is warm with splashes of color, while still restrained enough to allow future residents to add their own style to the spaces. With long-term occupation in mind, opportunities for storage are maximized so that growing families can expand within the space.
© Rory Gardiner
A single central, open stairwell wraps around the lift. The south stair façade is built with glass bricks so that gentle natural light can wash into the space. When homes are stacked vertically, the stairwell and rooftop garden are places of impromptu interaction and community connection
© Rory Gardiner
The building employs prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction to achieve a more sustainable outcome, with the apartments achieving an 8.4-star rating on average. This building methodology allowed for greater flexibility of layout, with each level and apartment a completely individual design responding to the varied orientation, size, and aspect of each apartment.
© Rory Gardiner
Overall, the High St Apartments sees a very liveable outcome, that responds to its context and exemplifies the need to test and develop new, more sustainable construction methods in Australia.
Project Info
Architects: Gardiner Architects
Country: Australia, Thornbury
Area: 471 m²
Year: 2022
Photographs: Rory Gardiner, Courtesy of Gardiner Architects
Design Team: Paul Gardiner, Vaughan Bones, Alex Millar, Amelda Berkley
Stylist: Jess Kneebone
Building Surveyors: Jazz Building Surveying
Clt Engineer: Vistek Engineers
Fire Engineers: Red Fire Engineers
