Resale opportunity at The Lothian in North Melbourne, the 2021 AIA award winning apartment block

The Lothian in North Melbourne, has won The Frederick Romberg Award for Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing.

Kennedy Nolan won the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) award this week for the project which was completed in May this year by Excelon Projects.

It had already won the 2021 Victorian Architecture Awards for multiple housing, along with being an entrant in the top 40 Think Brick Awards 2021.

Set on an island site, the Lothian consists of four-storey townhouses with roof gardens and two stacked two-storey apartments, one with a roof garden. 

The design was inspired by the attractive red brick edifices from the golden age of manufacturing found in the former working class suburb.

The judges noted The Lothian retains a sense of warehouse scale and dimensions, converting them into refined domestic use. 

The exterior is concrete, brickwork, arched windows, oculus windows and playful tile work. The red pressed clay bricks came from Krause in Stawell.

The jury described this development as “a robust, energy-efficient building that acts as a place of beauty and refuge for its inhabitants while offering an innovative alternative composition of a multi-residential building envelope”.

Excelon Projects is a Melbourne-based property development company established in 2011 to create well-considered residential projects.

The 480 square metre site with two laneways and two street frontages replaced an office buildingat 102 Lothian Street.

Lothian has been described as a programmatic and formal hybrid in response to its island site. 

The north-south orientation results in principal elevations to the east and west with deeply shaded façades to the west and the consideration of privacy to the east. 

The southern dwellings are imagined as artist studios.

To the north, an apartment is suspended in the existing tree canopy, in a leafy eyrie with eccentric oriel windows.

There is a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment for sale through Belle Property agent Scott McElroy at $880,000.

It comes with interior design by artisans such as IN-TERIA, who designed the handmade timber door hardware, and the famous Cherry pendant light by DANIEL EMMA.

Slate flooring is featured throughout.

Lothian Street's location, being close to Errol Street in the heart of old North Melbourne, is marketed as the perfect urban village with a post office, supermarket, Town Hall - and the best of Melbourne's cafes and restaurants including Auction Rooms and Mork.

Plus the famous cake shop Beatrix just a 5-minute walk away.