Jaques

Adaptive Reuse, Architecture, Interior Design, Urban Design

Residential

Melbourne

Photographer: Dianna Snape

Jaques is a new residential precinct located in the heart of Richmond. One of Melbourne’s original inner suburbs, it has had a long tradition of mixing industrial and manufacturing into residential, retail and commercial uses within an already established neighbourhood.

Location

Melbourne, Australia

Client

Riverlee

Cost

$290 million

Completion

2016

Traditional Custodians

Wurundjeri people

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Awards:

Property Council of Australia Innovation and Excellence Awards, Enduring Architecture Award, 2019
Asia Pacific Property Awards, Best Residential Awards for Australia, 2018
Urban Development Institute of Australia VIC Awards, Award for Urban Renewal - Victoria, 2017

Photographer: Dianna Snape

Built over three stages between 2012 and 2016, Jaques contains 337 uniquely designed apartments and provides its residents amenities such as gyms, communal gardens, a rooftop pavilion and entertainment rooms. Five new commercial premises activate a newly created laneway, forming a connection to the existing local street grid. Individual townhouses and strategically located entry lobbies line street level of the entire precinct while car parking, bike storage and services are all contained internally within the island site.

Photographer: Dianna Snape

Essential in introducing this development to its context, the building aims to transform the singular impenetrable form of the island site to a precinct that lends itself as an extension of the surrounding streetscape. It achieves this by creating a new laneway between Stages One and Three, providing a new pedestrian link between Griffiths St and Coppin St, as well as creating new retail opportunities within the precinct.

Photographer: Dianna Snape

Formerly a factory producing rock-crushing equipment, the site was enclosed within a 10-metre-high brick perimeter wall. A significant portion of this original wall has been retained and restored in the northern sector of the development of Stage One, which now houses a new addition of two-storey townhouses that line the ground floor of the building.

Photographer: Peter Clarke

Photographer: Dianna Snape

New life has been given to the composition of the facade by the introduction of cut-outs in the existing brick wall to create a more permeable street frontage and creating a continuity rhythm with the adjacent residential units.

Photographer: Dianna Snape

Stage Two maintained the scale and datum of the iconic perimeter wall by introducing a red brick facade to its first four levels which then continues into Stage 3 within the constraints of a smaller building form.

Throughout the development, a uniform palette of brick, precast, timber and metal have been utilised in the lower 3-4 levels of the buildings, referencing the industrial heritage of the site, while lighter colours and materials envelope the building above giving the overall form a sense of familiarity of scale and composition.