Overview

The Swan Street apartment building comprises 50 apartments across six storeys above a ground floor containing commercial and retail tenancies. The architecture builds on the design philosophy established by the Farmer Street townhouses to the north, and together both developments seek to create a striking precinct within the growing streetscape of Richmond.

Design & Architecture

The building layout sees the apartments oriented out to the 3 street frontages, punctuated by an open light court at the centre. As a building ‘in the round’, The Swan Street building is characterized by a rigorous exploration of repeated design elements to rationalize the diverse apartment layouts within. The façade composition comprises expressed columns reducing the visual length of the building into smaller parts relating to the traditional grain size of the streetscape.

Internally, the Swan Street apartments are designed with a focus on a high-quality living experience. Each apartment has been carefully oriented and configured to capture the fundamental qualities that make great living spaces – natural light and ventilation; outlook and views; careful consideration of privacy and quality fittings and materials with crafted details.

Location

Richmond in Melbourne is characterised by the contrast between the warehouses of its industrial heritage and the tight residential street behind with never-ending rows of cheek-to-jowl timber workers’ cottages. The external form of the building is designed to create a transition between Swan Street – with its more commercial context and emerging character of taller buildings – and the adjoining lower rise residential neighbourhood in Farmer Street.