In Sydney’s industrial south, Studio Johnston used a series of defensive architectural strategies to tame a tough urban site and deliver maximum amenity and greenspace for residents, while forging new urban connections.
Recently completed in Sydney’s south, Amara apartments by Studio Johnston occupy an exposed site along Botany Road, forcing the architects to dig deep and turn challenges into opportunity.
The scheme won a design excellence competition in 2016 for considering not just the building footprint, but a high quality private and public domain. Along with increased urban connectivity, came meaningful open green space and home-like amenities for all apartments, including abundant natural light and cross- ventilation.
The 6-storey building skirts the site perimeter, activated with street-level retail tenancies, and mews-style entries to a set of unique ground-floor walk-up terrace-style apartments. 191 residential apartments and 6 retail tenancies in total.
It’s designed with narrow floor-plates and 8 lift cores through the building to minimise corridor wastelands and deliver intimately-scaled lobbies and cross-ventilation to all apartments.
A 700mm-thick masonry facade to the Botany Road elevation fortifies against noise, with limited apertures for controlled daylight, ventilation and outlook. Glazed winter-gardens further buffer this elevation, while offering useable outdoor space and natural light.
Landscape is integral to the project. Enclosed at the building core is a 2,000 square-metre landscaped park for residents, delivering abundant natural light and garden outlook to all apartments. Rooftop gardens add a further 600 square metres of greenspace with meadows, barbecue areas and vegetable gardens, and sweeping views north to the city.
At street level, the building’s two through-site links connect Botany Road and Ralph Street, for visual connections to the neighbourhood. Street-level retail spaces, plus landscaped garden pockets and mews- style lobbies and entries to the walk-up terrace-style apartments, give Amara a layered, fine-grain urban edge.
Passive and active ESD are included and planned for. The main site-wide contribution are the 700mm- thick fortifying masonry walls to the urban edges, and glazed winter-gardens that together provide for heat and noise mitigation with liveable space and light. Other measures include:
• Low-E glazing throughout
• Narrow floor plates and thermal chimneys for full cross-ventilation to all apartments • Large skylights to top-floor apartments for abundant natural light
• Landscaped rooftop and 2,000 sqm central residents’ garden
• Rainwater harvesting for landscape irrigation.
Interior design further softens the urban condition lending warmth and liveability with tactile timbers and natural materials, in contrast to the robust masonry skin.
