85 Wharf Street is a luxurious and sustainable residential development designed with the future in mind
185 Wharf Street, for Cbus Property, is a vibrant residential development designed with the future in mind. The project blends luxury, sustainability and a sensitivity to Spring Hill’s historic surrounds, while integrating advanced engineering and technology to achieve structural and sustainable innovation in high-rise construction.
Layering thresholds and spaces
Embracing Brisbane’s ‘Buildings that Breathe’ guidelines and with a 5 Star Green Star rating, 185 Wharf Street has a subtropical ethos and passive solar design principles at the heart of its design. We designed from the inside out, articulating the floorplate to create spacious corner apartments, generous frontages and flow through the plans. Each dwelling has highly operable facades and dual balconies that echo notions of the suburban front and back yard and cater for Brisbane’s year-round climate. Maximising light and views and facilitating cross-ventilation, this layering of thresholds and spaces gives residents control over their environment and choice in their living experience.
Celebrating the subtropical lifestyle
Delivering generous communal amenity, each apartment has the equivalent of 12 square meters of recreation space distributed throughout the building. The main recreation amenities are concentrated on the podium-level deck, a calm and protected space that brings vibrancy and life to the streetscape. Evoking a natural Queensland landscape, it provides an expansive subtropical garden, explorative nature-play spaces, open lawns, a lap pool, heated spa, sunbathing deck, and outdoor dining areas. Among the lush fernery at the centre of the landscape is a double-height conservatory housing the residents’ dining room, gym, sauna, and treatment rooms focussed on wellness and relaxation.
Expressing structural efficiencies
The natural tones and crafted detailing of the precast structural elements form an elegant architectural expression, with the grid framing interior and exterior living spaces and providing a deep façade for sun protection. Employing humble innovations to achieve more with less, we worked with Arup engineers to develop an exoskeleton sway frame structure that increases the building efficiency, reducing the amount of concrete and steel and the associated embodied energy and cost. The double-height void of the podium recreation deck further increases the building’s structural efficiency as it dissipates the downdraft, thereby mitigating the wind.
