John Chapman House
Moore College
CLIENT | Moore Theological College
TYPE | Architecture, Interior Design, Documentation
STATUS | In Construction
LOCATION | Newtown, NSW
HEIGHT | 23 m, 4&6 Storeys
SCALE | GFA: 4,003 sqm, Site: 2,739 sqm
COST | $30 M
REnders | ATChain
Sensitive redevelopment of a site filled with heritage character to serve a new community.
Plus Architecture is excited to have received planning approval for the construction of the new John Chapman House at Moore Theological College in Sydney.
The $30 million project sees the sensitive redevelopment of a site filled with heritage character to serve a new community while respecting its important place of transition between areas of urban, social and cultural significance.
The redevelopment will see the demolition of existing two-storey 1950s buildings to make way for a new student accommodation building, with four and six-storey sections facing the prominent intersection of City Road, King Street, and Carillon Avenue, Newtown.
Plus Architecture believes the new John Chapman House will have a positive and exciting impact on the Camperdown/Newtown locality while addressing Moore Theological College’s needs for affordable residential development and the creation of an exciting space within the education precinct.
Uniquely Positioned
The John Chapman House site is uniquely positioned where a range of precinct characters and uses come together.
Regional Camperdown and Newtown are vibrant suburbs at the heart of the education and health precincts that surround the University of Sydney campus and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
While City Road is a tree-lined thoroughfare with a collection of heritage and modern style buildings, King Street’s retail strip is one of the economic, social and cultural main streets within the City, with a continuous collection of facades and the general uniformity of scale creating a distinct streetscape and visual identity. Carillon Avenue on the other hand, is slower in pace with a mix of lower scale residential with strong elements of heritage present.
Plus Architecture Design Director Rido Pin says the design approach was very much about understanding the context of these different areas and appreciating the scale and the importance of this particular intersection.
“There are some strong contextual aspects which drove the outcome of this project. The meeting point of two contrasting street characters, a key moment where the city transitions into Newtown, which has a very different personality again.
“One of the key principles was to define the streets and respond to its character through scale and materiality, while also absorbing the generous landscape setting to the North of our site. Through a series of design iterations, the building was sculpted to respond to these various design drivers and express these principles. What eventuated was a strong design outcome and a very exciting journey with our client and team,” he said.
The build form journey and urban approach
While the John Chapman House site is positioned in a conservation area and contained a number of buildings, none were listed as heritage, so the Plus team were able to consider all options for demolition or restoration.
It was decided that the L-shaped, three-storey Western wing, constructed in 1898, would be retained, whereas the Eastern wing, constructed in the 1950s, would be removed to make way for a large new building wrapping around the Eastern and Southern boundaries of the site
“An important part of our process was to assess which existing elements on site were able to contribute most to the final outcome while providing an opportunity to complement it with a new and exciting building,” says Pin.
“In that sense, it's all about trying to find a balance between the urban design response and the community aspect and program of this building, which are going hand-in-hand,” he said.
Scale transition and architectural expression became incredibly important, to balance the transitions between the busy urban thoroughfare with adjacent taller buildings, with the treelined heritage areas nearby. So, it was decided that the building would need to have two distinct elements, one at six-storeys facing City Road and one expressed at four-storeys on Carillon Avenue, joined by a glass element and landscaped connection which serves as the main entrance to the building.
A two-storey sandstone podium base sits along city road transitions into a sculptural building that provides sympathy with existing and heritage buildings in the district.
“The depth and detailing of the sandstone became an important design feature. We used it to define the four-story element tying it in with the adjacent building scale, but also in the overall base of the building to create a unified experience throughout the active ground plane,” says Pin.
“The building grounds itself into a lush landscape setting and synchronises itself with heritage buildings in the area and also with the buildings across the road.”
The six-storey element on City Road has a sandstone base with a much lighter contemporary façade treatment above. It features a fine- scale rhythm of silver- coloured battened screens to provide a sense of softness and sculptural quality to the façade.
As the building transitions around the corner towards Carillon Avenue, the four-storey element is entirely clad in sandstone, reflecting the heritage elements along the West and towards the North of the site.
“The expression of this transition became a key design expression for the building through all layers of the design process,” Pin says.
“Our approach straight from the bid was to think about how we could create this transition element and to shape those two components and respond to its character and the scale, but also to plan a very careful interaction with the community.”
“When entering the building, you go from a larger urban scale into a more nitty-gritty environment where you become part of a more compact, more defined and nuanced, human scale all of a sudden. I think that will be a very exciting moment within the arrival sequence of this building,” Pin says.
The community as a driving force
John Chapman House provides accommodation for students of Moore Theological College and requires a building where students can feel at home during their time at the college, providing a variety of communal spaces for learning, collaboration and friendships.
Residents will be a more mature community than your typical student accommodation, with a balance of residential options and faculty living for individual singles and 1 bedroom apartments for families.
Once completed, the building will house 91 student accommodation beds, of which five will be accessible, as well as a variety of meeting rooms, communal spaces which open to outdoor spaces and rooftop terraces.
“It's not just any student accommodation building, the students of Moore College will be living there alongside families and friends and what we have designed supports them to constantly engage with each other and the conversations around their beliefs,” says Plus Architecture Design Director, Rido Pin.
“That needs to be facilitated through a much more fine-grained environment, so, to sprinkle this community space throughout the building was very important. And so that started to really drive the internal configurations of space, their aspects and flexibility.
“We went on a journey to refine the design and deal with the spatial brief: the requirements for community space, the requirements for the size of rooms, the balance between smaller rooms and more apartments in terms of creating space for families versus more individuals.
“Understanding what their vision was for this building and what exactly they wanted to achieve was an important part of the process - it was very important that we had the time to talk that through their objectives and that the process wasn't rushed,” Pin says.
The design resolution of the architecture
Creating spaces for interaction is essential for the community of John Chapman House and community nodes are deliberately positioned at the pinch points where the two forms come together.
The ground floor is a generous open space, facing the gardens, which can be opened up and can engage with the outdoor garden setting in a flexible way. It will become the heart of the community, a calm environment filled with sunlight and away from the noise protected by the building.
The building aims to create a network of meeting places. Open staircases encourage people to walk between the various levels, connecting to the community rooms, encouraging community engagement and taking advantage of natural light and views at the key corners of the building.
The building includes a great variety of community spaces, with spaces proposed in the lower ground that don't always need sunlight such as a gym and cinema. The rooftop pavilion over the western building has internal community space blending seamlessly with the external outdoor decks. Kitchen, bbq and lounge areas animate the space and take full advantage of the distant views to the north combined with great solar access – it provides a very different aspect to the site and the surroundings.
Landscaping plays a critical role in the design of this building – there is a layered approach to the ground plane with courtyards defining different zones to be used in a considered way by the community. Lush landscaped edges and planters add to the character of these spaces and blend with the existing trees along the edges of the site to connect the park setting to the north into the heart of the development and eventually up into the building to help define the overall build form.
“There's a lot of generosity in this building in terms of creating a great place to live and determine what living and wellbeing mean in a building, particularly in these times.
“Often developers will push for every last square meter of the sellable area - this is a very different client.
“This was very much about providing the best living environment for their students, and I think that's the objective that we have been able to achieve through this process,” Pin said.
FEATURED
Moore Theological College: Inside Newtown institution’s $33m rebuild, Daily Telegraph
Design for New Student Accommodation in Sydney Aims to Foster Social Interaction, Archdaily
Green light given for Moore College’s new student accom building, Architecture and Design
Plus sets a higher bar for student accommodations at Sydney's Moore Theological College, Archinect
Student housing proposed in Sydney’s Camperdown, Architecture AU
Building for the Future – Replacing John Chapman House, Moore College
