Planning Application: 278 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

Today we look at a planning application for a 59-storey residential tower on the site of Phillip Shirts at 274-276 Little Lonsdale Street. The Peddle Thorp-designed tower would join two other recent projects for Brady Corp in Melbourne Sky and Melbourne Star as it shares a boundary and obscures the latter's eastern wall.

Approval is sought to demolish the majority of an existing three storey brick building to accommodate the apartment tower. The existing façade will be retained along the Little Lonsdale Street frontage and will continue along Zevenboom Lane for approximately 17.4 metres. A good outcome considering it has been identified as having little heritage significance.

Whilst it is noted this façade has not been heritage listed, it is considered that this existing façade contributes positively to the streetscape (including in terms of scale and rhythm of window openings) and is worthy of retention to enhance the streetscape address of the site. Furthermore, its adaption will form an appealing feature of the proposed development scheme at the site.

Urbis Planning Report

A wrap of two ground level retail tenancies addresses the Little Lonsdale Street and Zevenboom Lane corner. The main entry lobby, loading facilities and other ancillary services complete the ground floor with bicycle parking and car parking reserved for the four basement levels.

Urban Context

The proposal lies in a quarter of the city currently undergoing a significant transformation with projects such as Eporo Tower, Carlson Tower and Latrobe Tower to the immediate north and 380 Lonsdale Street to the south. 278 Little Lonsdale would be one of the taller buildings in the area as illustrated by the diagram below:

This wouldn't be of concern unless you factor in the site footprint relative to some of the other towers of similar height. At 735sqm the site is significantly smaller than the foortprints of Melbourne Central and the future development at 380 Lonsdale Street. These towers also have frontages along major CBD streets whereas the development is within a largely small scale 'neighbourhood' defined by red brick low-rise buildings bisected by a network of laneways.

The Tower

The main tower element rising behind the retained facade shares an aesthetic quality with its older yet shorter siblings to the west. Sheer glazed curtain walls are interrupted by the revealing of balconies behind.

Similarly to Australia 108 the facade features a stripped gradation from top to bottom with the stripes becoming incrementally more contracted towards the tower's pinnicale. This volume above a 'podium' with a furrier treatment involves a bronze coloured veil similar to original designs for another Peddle Thorp design, Vision tower at 500 Elizabeth Street. This splash of colour continues to the western boundary of the tower in the form of solid spandrels which rise up the remainder of the tower.

Project Summary

• Building height: 59-storeys, 186m to top of plant
• Retention of Phillips Shirts' facade
• 314 apartments in total
• 127 x 1 Bed, 144 x 2 Bed, 43 x 3 Bed
• 42 car spaces serviced via car stacker system to basement levels 2-4
• 94 Bicycle spaces to basement level 1
• 158sqm of ground floor retail

Comment

The proposed development continues the recent trend of large scale high-rises encroaching on the relatively low scale streetscapes which define Melbourne's 'Little' streets and laneways. I've always been a proponent for skyscrapers in the CBD, I won't shy away from that fact, however I don't consider developments of this scale to be appropriate responses to the character and grain of these areas.

The footprints of these sites is generally much smaller than the larger sites on the primary CBD streets. This results in narrow skyscrapers with two shared boundaries that if built to the extremity as usually tends to occur, creates a 'wall' effect that is amplified on much smaller streets from a pedestrian perspective.

I don't consider this to be a desirable outcome and would invite anyone to tell me otherwise or convince me that these are the type of streets we wish to create moving forward. The benchmark for development in these smaller scale streets should be the more modest additions found on McKillop Street or Hardware Lane - unobtrusive yet worth tilting your head up to appreciate. Leave the big towers to the major streets and their intersections.

Project Team

• Developer: 278 Little Lonsdale Pty Ltd
• Architecture: Peddle Thorp
• Planning: Urbis
• ESD: SBE
• Traffic: Cardno
• Waste: Wastech