Harbourside heritage building becomes luxury apartments

The conversion of a heritage-listed federation building into 44 luxury apartments meant that TTW needed to collaborate closely with both Architects and Heritage Consultants in order to achieve design outcomes while maintaining the heritage aspects of this unique building.

Located on Darling Island, the original building sat on an area of reclaimed land adjacent to a concrete wharf. Built in 1912, prior to any earthquake loading requirements, the building needed strengthening to adhere to current regulations and practices. This involved the addition of two external reinforced concrete lift cores that are tied to the building, strengthening details that tie the floors to the external walls, and also the strengthening of roof top parapets with structural steel support frames.

Being a residential building, car parking was a necessity. Taking into consideration the site constraints, a three-level basement carpark has been incorporated to the side of the existing building extending beneath the Darling Island Road footpath. This basement area sits well below the harbour, approximately 9m below the high water mark. The depth below water and the variable nature of the fill used on site required use of a diaphragm wall with a fully tanked basement slab; with tension piles socketed into rock to resist the hydrostatic uplift loads.

Completed in 2019, the apartments are another demonstration of TTW's expertise in Structural and Civil engineering, and commitment to innovative and elegant outcomes.

Client: Aqualand

Architect: PTW

Value: $50M

Completion: 2019

Sector: Residential

Services: Structural, Civil