Yarra's Edge Apartment and Tower 3

by Ha Architecture

The Yarra’s Edge Apartment and Tower 3 Projects by Ha Architecture are a renovation to a three-bedroom apartment and the interior refurbishment to the residential Tower 3 at Yarra’s Edge in Docklands, Victoria.

Although technically classed a ‘penthouse’, the apartment has modest ceiling heights and lacked natural light to certain rooms. Ha’s role was to deliver a sustainable concept with longevity, that would encompass the apartment holistically.

The ‘linchpin’ to the apartment design was the entry corridor. It was confined yet the primary entry. Ha’s response was to bring natural light into the entry and hide the low ceiling with a polished stainless mirror ceiling; this mirrored surface reflects views of the city along the corridor ceiling. It was not fully anticipated that the gesture would provide a reflection of the corridor, presenting a double height volume upon arrival. The experience is amplified by the repetitious detailing of the recycled black-butt battens, acting as a colonnade while seamlessly concealing the corridor storage.

From the brief to Ha, a beautiful overarching design philosophy was derived that honored the key principles of Zen in the apartment design. The client spent much of their professional life working and living in Asia, in particular Japan where they formed a cultural affiliation. When returning to Australia they brought back a collection of beautiful furnishings of personal significance. They also brought with them a rare insight and an intimate understanding of high density residential living. This allowed them to form a clear position on tailoring the apartment to suit them when engaging a designer.

In reinventing the apartment Ha Architecture acknowledged the client’s affiliation with Japanese culture, while designing a contemporary Australian home for their retirement. Special consideration was made for accessibility so the apartment can cater to their changing needs as they grow older.

The highest priority was to create a sense of entry to the apartment while improving the functional storage. The bathrooms were stripped to a raw shell for re-planning, so natural light could (better) access the rooms.

The renovation was executed within the limitations of the existing apartment building and resulted in a unique example of high density living in Australia. The strategy was to improve the apartment amenity through access to natural light. This involved uncovering boarded-up facades (making way for a shower with a view), and internal partitions to rooms becoming glazed.

Through Ha’s endeavor to achieve simplicity and elimination of clutter (Kanso) each object in the house was designed to have a place. Ha Architecture went to great lengths to rework the apartment planning to embed program in under-utilised spaces and make little fuss of these functions through discreet joinery details. Albeit a generous apartment in size, each space needed to feel special while performing its functional role.

The Yarra’s Edge Apartment project was located inside Tower 3 in the Yarra’s Edge residential apartment complex in Docklands, Victoria. The Tower 3 project is a refurbishment of this 32 story tower. The project encompasses a complete new foyer interior as well as new lift lobbies for the 32 stories above.

The project brief for the foyer was to create two distinct spaces that housed smaller intimate moments whilst creating a homogeneous pallet that tied to the lift lobbies up the tower.

The project takes references from local sources referencing the colours and materials of the marina adjacent. Timber and coloured zinc panels line the primary interior walls of the foyer. Saw-toothed, the panels create a duality in the space from full timber in one direction to full zinc in the other. Blues are contrasted with warm tones of timber extensively throughout the project the subtle colours highlighting the beauty of the natural Australian Timber.

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