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Famous French studio Ateliers Jean Nouvel has received the green light to proceed with their first project in Melbourne. The $700 million AUD highrise development was recently given the blessing of Victoria’s planning minister Richard Wynne despite the plan exceeding the plot ratio limits imposed by the city's interim planning controls. The 70-storey tower by Sterling Global has been proposed at a plot ratio of 29.1:1, surpassing the prescribed ratio of 24:1. In a statement describing his reasoning for the approval, the minister said, "the building meets the requirement of delivering public benefit."
The 244-metre skyscraper at 383 La Trobe Street will be one of the tallest in the city. It would include 488 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartment units and a 196-room hotel. A new rear laneway — ostensibly an extension of Guildford Lane — would also be created and connect Queen Street to the heritage brick wall surrounding the former Melbourne Mint. It will terminate at the site of a public book exchange operated in partnership with Victoria University. Nouvel sees the curated library as a visual and practical extension of the heritage wall.
The front facade of the building will take cues from the adjacent brick wall by employing a red motif, while the east elevation will be coloured gold to reference Nouvel's observations of Melbourne's cityscape. The city was a major boomtown during the Victorian gold rush in the 19th century and gestures to this historic period proliferate the local built form. The crown of the 297-metre Eureka Tower for example, Melbourne's tallest building, is characterized by glass windows plated in 24-carat gold.
The west facade will implement a green wall in deference to the nearby Flagstaff Gardens and the glazed south elevation takes inspiration from the interior curtain of Frank Lloyd Wright's Hillside Theatre at Taliesin in Wisconsin. Each side of the tower thus hosts a completely different design that reflects the immediate urban context of that face. All walls will be wrapped in an architectural grid-like system that will frame each apartment and hotel room. The contemporary addition to Melbourne's core represents a shift from the symmetry and synchronization of the more typical residential glass box towers that have typified modern urban development around the world.
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