This site Fenwick is located in Kew, a suburb in Melbourne situated on the banks of the
Yarra River, the Birrarung, which is really evocative topography and landscape.
There's a wonderful relationship between dense forested banks of the river aligned with a
really beautiful heritage precinct, a really special pocket of Melbourne's built fabric.
Our clients Angle saw a real opportunity here. You have that sense that you're sort of
on the edge of a wilderness even though you're very, very close to the city and the fact that
nothing can be built in front of it allows us to take advantage of these remarkable panoramas.
It was really sort of conceived as a building mass that would be broken apart
and there was this notion that the scale would drop down towards the street
and read like a two-storey house and then elevate as it traveled down the site with the topography
and in that breaking up of the total building into these three smaller distinct pavilions
is opening up these view lines and view corridors through canopy trees and gardens
down over the river, over the north, opening up those wonderful long-distance landscape views.
It's kind of interesting when you think about designing these spaces
because we don't actually know who the end user of this space is, so
for us as a practice. we'll start to think about you know, how humans want to live in the space.
Creating a space is a real tactile experience. The spatial planning is paramount but you know,
that sense of warmth, generosity and materiality was a real focus for us. Art, fashion,
you know history all informs our work so I always start with the material and I'll always start with
you know, a piece of art. I think that's how you create a space that can interlay
for multiple users and I think that's something we did apply here at Fenwick.
It's so nice to have a really big gesture within a space.
The island bench was always a monolithic form and that soft radius into the rear panel
is really subtle but you know, a sophisticated detail and nuance.
The material selection were all authentic materials that have a durability.
So this is raw copper, galvanised steel and concrete;
all materials that from the day of the produce finished, will age and mature
as the gardens evolve and grow up around them, so that they sit in balance with each other.
We have a lot of windows which are facing into the voids which cut between all the pavilions and
allow those wonderful views through to the terrain and those windows are screened by a copper screen,
which sort of folds around the windows and allows for privacy but light to come in.
For me, I think the hero space is in this project are the spaces in between
facade and surface and gesture as the concrete curves around some of these
little in-between moments of the buildings, which allow shadow and texture and sun to
pass through the dapper bite for the trees as they mature to be cast across the surface.
The building will become an extension of the environment we actually wanted the building to sit
lightly within the landscape obviously with the borrowed landscape, we wanted to repeat the look
of the vegetation that you see beyond those vistas into the actual project itself and then with the
plants, slowly enveloping the garden as that relic element that Edition Office we're trying to
achieve. There are quite a few elements that will change throughout the year and seasons. We should
see a lot more layers forming in the garden, so we've intentionally planted large groupings of
native shrubs and then you'll get these grasses coming up through that as well as lower ground
covers that should create these incredible layers of different textures and colours.
The only sort of deciduous element we've got is the Boston ivy, which will be climbing up
the buildings, which will certainly give us that beautiful change of season where you'll
get the greening of the building during summer and the warm times and then the autumn colour
and then the building will reveal itself further during winter time.
The garden will only continue to get better and better as time goes on, as our plants get more
and more established and form habitats and systems that help to support the building.
Having the project completed it's a real pleasure to go through that
journey of arriving on site and and feeling that continued connection to country
as you see the sun and rise and fall across this particular bend in this particular place.