Sydney’s building shouts: Deutsche Bank, MLC, Ernst & Young, ANZ, Suncorp. Perth’s high-rise buildings are like a mining index: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside. In Melbourne, the investor’s residential skyscrapers constitute a large number of newly developed, names including Aurora, Verve, Empire and Vision – these names are timeless (and nowhere).
The recent renovation of the Australian city centres has made them look unruly and wild, with their gilded towers and curtain walls compiled from cladding company catalogues and mixed building types. Two-story Victorian front abutt six-storey apartment building, or completely engulfed by the tower. This patchwork, combined with a desirable brand image, gives the impression that real estate developers and financiers are the main enablers and shapers of this “anytime, anywhere” approach to urban development.
This part is correct. Market-driven development has always played a leading role in urban settlement in Australia. But the market operates within the framework of the rules, mitigating the negative impact of urban development on the public interest.
Governments play a key role in formulating policies, rules and regulations that guide urban development through planning policies, design guidelines and building codes. In these planning mechanisms, government actions should reflect the standards and expectations of the communities they represent.
So why is there such a gap between the centres of Australian cities, including public spaces and community expectations? Part of the problem is the lack of guidance on quality design and the consistent decisions necessary to achieve it in the planning and design phases.
Take Melbourne as an example
This is more obvious than the tower built recently in Melbourne.
In the twenty years to 2015, there was a lack of strong regulation of the planning of higher buildings. 1999 – When the economy is in a downturn – The state government has eliminated density control in the city centre to achieve maximum flexibility in real estate development.
These controls determined a maximum floor area ratio (FAR) of 12:1. This means that if the site area is 1,000 square meters, construction of 12,000 square meters of floor space is allowed. It may be a building with 12 floors throughout the building, or half to 24 floors of the building.
Only by chance, Melbourne’s height is limited to between 265 and 315 meters, so buildings do not invade the flight path.
The height of Melbourne buildings is not necessarily a major issue. The new residential tower occupies more than 100,000 new residents who migrate to Greater Melbourne each year, and these people are more likely to walk than drive. Limiting the height of a building does not necessarily lead to better buildings and communities.
However, setting height limits through density control – adjusting floor areas and apartments in buildings, neighborhoods or areas – is an important lever for better design. This is a form of regulatory “bargaining power” that allows some extra floors to be exchanged for better public facilities. Without it, there could be many negative consequences, especially at the street level, which is evident in some of the recently built towers.
Melbourne’s 2018 report “Promoting Quality Urban Design Results in Central Cities and South Banks” states that “the past 20 meters of building facades, especially storefront designs lack design investment”. Issues include colored glass that is allowed to be parked on the podium on the ground, invisible for activities (such as public areas or commercial leases), and poor materials and architectural details that disrupt the quality of the streetscape. This can lead to poor visual connections between building occupants and pedestrians, thereby reducing surveillance from above, which will help make the street safer.
Some developments look very cheap and unremarkable. With flat finishes and façades, tinted glass, floor-to-ceiling windows, repeating frames and mullion, architectural services occupy the front of the street – despite the slogans of luxury apartments used to sell these towers.
More rigorous control for better design
Since the implementation of interim control measures in 2015, planning control measures in Melbourne’s central and southern shore areas have become more tense. These controls became permanent controls in 2016. Most of the podiums and packed towers that have recently emerged in Melbourne have received planning permission before.
The new controls dictate stronger requirements for minimum street frustration, shadows, wind effects, FAR restrictions and tower separation. The new height limit is based on density control. However, the density of high-rise apartment buildings is still higher than that of Tokyo or Hong Kong.
These new planning controls have led to a reduction in the ground parking platform because the developer’s goal is to increase production with area ratio constraints.
While these new planning provisions have promoted quality design, good design means that ambiguity is still good for Melbourne’s higher architectural solutions. This becomes a problem when high-rise buildings are subject to discretionary height restrictions.
The report assesses measurable standards for development applications beyond priority: MGS Architects’ analysis and recommendations are observed through several case studies in Melbourne – including South Yarra and Collingwood – to negotiate additional heights for projects demonstrating “high standard architectural design” “But the good design here may be related to frustration, shadows, the provision of public spaces or high-quality architectural details. This may be because buildings are sold as “landmarks”, “portals” or “icons”.
But is the height of the building a milestone? If so, how high should it be? If the building is “slender” and “sculpture”, should the badness of the public facilities (such as traffic or shadows) be traded?
For the project to the Planning Court VCAT, the City of Melbourne report states:
If the arbitral tribunal is required to make a decision between acceptable urban design results or project feasibility (eg, the ability to implement a feasible tower envelope), the feasibility and consolidation objectives are generally balanced.
What else needs to be done?
Lack of certainty and consistency. MGS Architects writes that this “destroys the public’s perception of a fair and orderly development approval process”.
All real estate developers, architects and planners want the consistency and clarity of urban planning, design and policy in order to deliver their projects – as well as the local community. Despite moving in the right direction in Melbourne, there is still room for improvement. This includes the introduction of clearer density control associated with quality building design, designer leadership decision-making and design-guided envelope control during design review (matching quantitative rules that allow development to match qualitative rules, and focusing on how architecture interfaces with the public domain) ).
However, to encourage innovation, regulations should still allow for flexibility.
The growth of residential buildings in Melbourne has strengthened the regulatory needs of Australian urban residents for quality design results. It warns Melbourne and strategic town centres throughout Australia that there is insufficient quality control for its taller buildings.
With the implementation of the amendments to the Capital City Development Plan, some of the height restrictions in downtown Adelaide have been alleviated. This led to a series of proposals for new commercial, residential and hotel buildings over 100 meters or under construction. Let us hope that with strong design guidelines, Adelaide avoids some of the recent additions to Melbourne.