comment
Museum Residences
156 West Superior
'PORTICO' Scots Church Redevelopment
Clipper Mill Assembly Building
De Plussenburgh
6747-6759 St-Urbain Street
Guerrero Street Mixed-Use Development
Viridian Noosa Residences
165 Charles Street
Lofts23Viridian Noosa Residences
Linked pavilions follow the contours of a hilly former banana plantation
Viridian Noosa is a series of rowhouse apartments and houses constructed on the well-known "Banana Plantation" site, which forms a backdrop to Noosa's Hastings Street. The site, located on the sloping western face of Noosa Hill overlooking Laguna Bay, was previously cleared and farmed as a banana plantation for several decades, then used for grazing until 2001.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
An assessment of the natural topographical conditions including existing access tracks, and location of significant existing vegetation resulted in the typical building section being broken into separate pavilions. John Mainwaring and Associates, the architects, designed the timber residences and lanes to “wriggle” around the contours allowing the integration of the project with existing flora and fauna, while the colors and hues of the selected materials further embed the development into the hillside landscape. Garages are removed from the residences and joined by a “topographically specific” access bridge. This allows the pavilions to follow the topography up and down relative to each other depending on their location within the rugged and awkward terrain.
The difficult physical nature of the site meant that structures were conceived using timber-framed construction with steel superstructure in the undercroft and roofing system. This approach ensures that the project “touches the ground lightly,” and minimized adverse impact on the existing site ecology.
With the breathtaking views from the site toward Laguna Bay in the northwest, it would have been easy to orient the residence solely toward the water, but providing transparency to the eastern elevation looking back up towards the vegetated hillside reinforces the sense of place and awareness of being on the edge of the Noosa National Park. One of the inspirations for the geometric abstraction of the elevation’s tectonic is the work of Lockhardt River artist Rosella Namok.
The ply has been patterned into large weatherboards to geometrically articulate the elevation patterning which, with appropriate coloring give a sympathetic aesthetic and environmental synergy.
Formal name of project: Viridian Noosa Residences
Location: Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia
Gross square footage: 56510 sq.ft.
Completion Date: October 2006
Total construction cost: 17Million AUS Dollars
Owner: Viridian Noosa Pty Ltd
Architect:
J M A
John Mainwaring & Associates
Lev1 36 Wyandra Street St, Newstead, Q, 4006
PO Box 380 Spring Hill QLD 4004, Australia
Ph: 61-7-3252 4400
Fax: 61-7-3252 2911
Web: www.jma-arch.com
Email: jma@jma-arch.com
Video
Sign in to Comment
To write a comment about this story, please sign in. If this is your first time commenting on this site, you will be required to fill out a brief registration form. Your public username will be the beginning of the email address that you enter into the form (everything before the @ symbol). Other than that, none of the information that you enter will be publically displayed.