Designer wins competition to design healthcare worker housing community
LONDON: A designer has won a competition to craft a mid-city healthcare worker housing community.
Silvester Fuller has been appointed to design a new worker and market housing building within Redfern Place in inner-city Redfern, following a design competition.
Located at 600-660 Elizabeth Street, the project is being delivered by Tier One community housing provider Bridge Housing on behalf of the Land and Housing Corporation to house over 300 families. Redfern Place will comprise four buildings, including a community space, market and key worker housing, affordable housing, NDIS and social housing, as well as Bridge Housing’s new head office.
Welcoming the appointment of Silvester Fuller to lead the design for the redevelopment, Minister for Housing and Homelessness Rose Jackson says, “More social housing in inner city Sydney is crucial, and this project will bring together a diverse housing mix along with a community facility that will greatly benefit the Redfern community.”
Executive chair of Bridge Housing Stephen Bull noted, “Redfern Place marks a turning point in property development history at a time when housing affordability has never been more important. Typically, inner-city prices exclude people on lower incomes. Redfern Place will comprise 70% of social and affordable homes. Giving people a home where they want to live, close to family networks and their jobs. The design will also be audacious, genuinely striving to design for community and country, celebrating Redfern’s history, vibrance and resilience.”
Bridge Housing and infrastructure partner Capella Capital have gathered Australia’s design innovators, including Hayball as overall design team lead and executive architect, Aspect Studios landscape architects, cultural advisers, and Yerrabingin, with Silvester Fuller and Architecture AND completing the team. Architecture AND will design the 3,500sqm community facility at Redfern Place.
Silvester Fuller’s winning design for the market housing building met the brief for the community and country with their organic U-shaped footprint. Featuring a stepped 14- and 10-storey design, the building will create 180 market and key worker homes on the site’s northeast. A ‘Family Floor’ rooftop garden on level 10 will provide residents ample outdoor and indoor communal spaces while an internal street or breezeway will interlink homes within the building and provide a connection with Kettle Street.
“We are delighted to have been selected to work with Bridge Housing and the rest of the design team on a new housing precinct for this important site in the heart of Redfern. Our vision strives to rebalance amenity and cost with a more meaningful Connection to Country. The ambition of the project is a community-focused collection of homes proposing an evolution in the allocation of private and shared space, announcing a small incremental shift serving as a catalyst for the evolution of how we might live together and share this land we are so fortunate to call home,” Silvester Fuller partner Penny Fuller said.
Architecture AND principal Dr Andrew Burns says, “We are excited to have been selected to work with Bridge Housing, Capella Capital and the design team to deliver an exceptional, integrated development at Redfern Place on Gadigal land. The project is a rare opportunity for us to design a major facility with and for the community of Redfern, the place where we work.”
Hayball principal and NSW Studio lead, Dave Tordoff adds, “Redfern Place, like Redfern itself, will be a place for community; it will be contemporary, eclectic, connected and have deep roots to country. We are excited to collaborate with Bridge Housing and the new additions to the design team to create homes and community facilities that will be interwoven into this incredible context, creating much-needed social value for residents for generations to come.”
