Bourke Street Apartment – Fowler and Ward

Injected with a rich sense of character and unique personality, Bourke Street Apartment sees the reinvigoration of a 1980s residential shell to create a vibrant yet calm home in Melbourne’s CBD.

Elevating and overlooking the established tree canopies lining the city’s central spine of Bourke Street, the apartment of the same name sees the repurposed reinvigoration of the original residence. Taking cues from the existing building materiality, bold gestures and expressive colours are used to delineate internal zones and make use of the raised platforms that were unable to be altered. The resulting home draws from its contextual architectural language and creates a unique home for its young family.

Elevating and overlooking the established tree canopies lining the city’s central spine of Bourke Street, the apartment of the same name sees the repurposed reinvigoration of the original residence.

Having met at architecture school in 2004, Fowler and Ward’s founding directors Jessie Fowler and Tara Ward went their own way in practice and later reconvened to fulfil their earlier commitment to working together. Describing their ideal project, the duo reflect that “we love working on projects that give back to the character of the city, creating homes in small spaces, sensitive renovations that breathe life into buildings at risk of becoming redundant or lost to developers, and new-builds or multi-residential developments that increase density without overwhelming neighbour hood character.”

In particular, they identify the process of reuse and sustainability to be a core passion. “It’s a great exercise in responding to existing characters. We always hope to create highly responsive designs that honour their context. Whether it’s an existing 1980s building, an amazing landscape, a heritage streetscape or an undeveloped space. We do acknowledge that all spaces (cities and suburbs included) have to evolve, but we want to preserve a part of its history. We see each of our projects as contributing to a gradual, slow-moving change.”

Taking cues from the existing building materiality, bold gestures and expressive colours are used to delineate internal zones and make use of the raised platforms that were unable to be altered.

In this vein, their approach to finding appropriate materiality for the Bourke Street Apartment was driven by its context, Jessie explains.“ We used a strategy of using rich and homogenous materials, inspired by the existing building to make sense of some of the more problematic spaces in the apartment.” Built by Specialized Structures, the project’s services and structural rigidity, inherent to working within an existing build, also needed careful coordination, and it was this close collaboration that meant minor changes could have such a larger impact. Tara says, “the angular nature of the building – over-sized bay windows, octagonal spaces and lightwells – informed many of the formal decisions. We chose not to soften these moments but amplified them through use of colour and detailing.”

The resulting home draws from its contextual architectural language and creates a unique home for its young family.

The new kitchen becomes the gravitating pull of the home as both asocial gathering space and an ideally-designed working from home hub at the same time. Doused in a sea of pink, the custom joinery also acts as a multipurpose dividing element within the home. The concealed storage, bar and wardrobe sit alongside an integrated study area. Balancing the vibrancy of some areas with, for example, the more subdued experience of the bedrooms creates a harmony.

One of the major roadblocks in the transformation was turned into a key feature. The raised platform of what is now the living area had created an isolated and confused space originally. A pulling of greenery from the adjacent balcony inward sees the space activated and emphasised through the matching toned sofa, creating a ‘window seat’ moment. Together with the liberal use of pink and green, bronze glass mosaic tiles wrap columns and make a likely entry of terrazzo as a welcomed addition to the palette, honouring the home’s original era.

Bourke Street Apartment shows a clear connection to sustainability, context and a preservation of character, and, if it is an indication of the potential of future spatial resolutions, Fowler and Ward are ones to watch.