Private
Mount Eliza Townhouses
Adaptable living environments shaping rich connections with place, history and community.
As an active, long standing member of Mornington Shire Council’s Design Advisory Panel, BKK has been advocating for better architectural design, urban design and planning controls within this region for many years. From the outset, we recognised that this project provided an opportunity to demonstrate how these ideas could be applied, and to set a benchmark for thoughtful development and high quality design that would successfully respect and maintain a sense of local character and nurture a connected community. Our scheme proposes to rezone and transform a former nursery site located on the Nepean Highway, at the gateway to the Mount Eliza township, into a residential community featuring 25 diverse row-housing-style homes.
Big Picture Thinking
Our design draws influence from the local context, reflecting both the intimate relationship between the built environment of Mount Eliza and the surrounding coastal landscape, and the garden suburb concept articulated in the nearby Ranelagh Estate, which was masterplanned by renowned architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. These influences define an integrated approach between the built form and landscape, with our design providing a contemporary take on the traditional garden suburb by arranging the homes around the perimeter of the triangular site to create shared parkland at the centre.
Planned to maximise community connection, the homes turn their back to the highway, with each dwelling and private yard oriented to seamlessly blend into the shared native landscape. Shaping a connection to the history of the site and a vibrant public interface, the scheme incorporates an existing heritage hedge and building, which will be retained and transformed into a cafe for immediate and local residents.
Collaboration and Humility
Building upon our shared contributions on the Mornington Shire Council Design Advisory Panel, this project evolved via a thoroughly integrated, mutually respectful and collaborative design relationship with the REALMstudios landscape architecture team. From the initial site analysis, local landscape explorations, and interpretation of the Griffin’s urban planning principles, to the development of an overarching design strategy combining liveability, sustainability and adaptability, we worked together, drawing upon shared intentions and complementary expertise. Together we created a community where the landscape wraps into the built form, providing a continuous natural landscape with gradations of privacy that invite residents to inhabit the home and landscape as one.
Playfulness and Innovation
Our intention was to create a diverse suite of adaptable forever-homes that would attract an ageing in place market. We developed a curated collection of predominantly 3 bedroom housing options / price points, including three different types of townhouses and 3 signature homes positioned at the corners of the site. Each home has been designed with consideration of the changing needs of residents in different stages of their lives, providing a flexible floor plate to support adaptable living models and allowing the home to evolve over time. Each living space has been oriented to maximise natural light and offer views to either private or shared landscape.
The interface between built form and landscape is designed to create a sense of harmony and cohesion. The homes are designed to sit within the landscape, with a material palette of articulated masonry, charred timber, and natural timber finishes providing a backdrop to planting and landscaping that evokes the various landscape characteristics of coastal Mount Eliza, from scrubby planting to rocky craggs.
Leadership and Advocacy
This project provided an opportunity to demonstrate to Council, and the local community, a better way to provide housing. We needed to show Council that we could walk the talk regarding the key ideas introduced by BKK and REALMstudios through our involvement in Council’s Design Advisory Panel, and advocate for these ideas by applying them to this project context. We achieved this via a detailed process with Council, guiding them along a sophisticated journey that carefully justified each design move, and articulated the benefits of a landscape integrated approach in creating a sustainable and community-oriented development.
Transformative Places, Holistic Benefits
The Mount Eliza Townhouses project is a placed-based design response whilst simultaneously being a people-centric design response. It brings together a sensitive reinterpretation of local planning principles and landscape character, as a community of homes that exist within the landscape and support residents to comfortably weather the changes life brings. Our design proposes to transform this underutilised commercially-zoned site, into a vibrant residential community, carefully embedded within the natural environment.