Apartment towers are getting taller, but one of the city’s leading architecture firms says an authentic mix of uses is the next step in the maturation of Perth.
Apartment towers are getting taller, but one of the city’s leading architecture firms says an authentic mix of uses is the next step in the maturation of Perth.
Property pundits, particularly those in the apartments space, have long advocated that the time for urban sprawl is over in Perth, with the amenity of the city dependent on the development of taller buildings.
Bigger buildings are a growing trend in the Western Australian capital, with Perth in line for a wave of apartment towers the scale of which has never been seen before.
As reported by Business News earlier this year, there are 12 apartment towers above 30 storeys in various stages of the planning pipeline. And while not all may go ahead, the proposals add weight to the argument that taller buildings will increasingly be part of Perth’s future, rather than the currently dominant single-dwellings along the urban fringes.
So-called ‘mega towers’ to have received approval include a 67-storey and 58-level double tower development proposed at the old Megamart site on Beaufort Street, where marketing has recently commenced, as well as two buildings of 49 and 43 levels, respectively, at Kings Square.
Other developments poised to add new height to Perth include Finbar Group’s 39-level Civic Heart and 38-storey Concerto, as well as Sirona Capital’s 41-storey Glass House project in South Perth.
Woods Bagot Australia regional executive chairman Mark Mitcheson-Low said it was clear there was a lot going on in the Perth skyscraper scene, while foreshadowing more to come.
“For us, the inquiry hasn’t stopped, people are looking at getting schemes done and at least getting concepts done for sites,” Mr Mitcheson-Low said.
“For those that are in the market, they’re not going to stop what they’re doing because that’s their business – they’re going to keep looking for opportunities.
“We think that we’re at the bottom of the cycle and now is the time to be gearing up for the future in mixed-use development and towers.
“Perth is changing and we all know that we are pushing the limits of the urban fringe.
“You see it in all the cities in Australia – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – where developers are challenging height to not only get the maximum yield, but also because land costs are going up and you’ve got to make the most of it.”
Part of the preparation at Woods Bagot is the appointment of Paul Runaghan as senior design leader at its Perth studio, whose focus will be squarely on taller buildings.
Mr Runaghan comes to Perth from the UK, where he previously worked as a tall buildings specialist for prominent architecture firm Sir Terry Farrell and Partners.
He told Business News his experience in other cities across England, Europe, South Africa and the Middle East, was that tall buildings needed to be looked at holistically.
Issues that need to be considered, Mr Runaghan said, were city-wide view corridors, impacts on lower-rise buildings and on the ground plane, as well as micro-climate issues like altering city wind patterns, creating shadows or glare, and affecting building and surface temperatures.
“The solution may not just be a tall building, but ultimately what’s best for the city itself. And because tall buildings do affect the character and identity of cities, you have to be very careful in how you approach things,” said Mr Runaghan, who is also a member of the international Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
“Their impacts are quite far reaching for the identity of a city and so forth, but also how people feel about that city as well.
“Tall buildings can also give the ability on the ground plane to open up cities so people can move around much more freely.”
Mr Mitcheson-Low said the recent furore over apartment towers proposed in South Perth, focused largely on a 44-level proposal at 74 Mill Point Road, showed the challenges facing developers and architects in seeking progressive development.
But he said despite the opposition from vocal resident groups, bigger buildings were inevitable in near-city suburbs.
“People don’t want it in their backyard but if you look at Sydney and North Sydney, there are towers there, if you look at Brisbane there are towers on both sides of the river,” Mr Mitcheson-Low said.
“You have got to be able to create these satellite cities to allow people to live in the area that they want.
“The view from South Perth is fantastic and people are going to want to maximise that.
“And you’ve still got towers out there that were built in the 1970s, and they are quite substantial.
“They probably faced the same furore and now everyone is used to them being there.
“I’m not saying the residents haven’t got their right to (protest), but it is probably the future whether people like it or not.
“The city can’t keep on going along the coast, it will end up at Geraldton.”
The next step for Perth, Mr Mitcheson-Low said, would be the introduction of buildings that were truly mixed-use, in line with major global cities.
What had been pitched as mixed-use in Perth generally comprised a predominantly residential tower with a small bar or a cafe on the ground floor. In other cities, the mix of uses was much greater, he said.
“Our city has a long way to go, because other cities like New York and others or even the smaller cities, they have the full complement, it’s a pixelated city if you like,” Mr Mitcheson-Low said.
“It’s not all the culture over here and all the business over here and the retail is over here, like our city is at the moment.
“It’s actually mixed vertically and horizontally and you’ll find in most of those cities there is a university in the centre of the city, there are aged care centres in the city, there are schools that people go to in the centre of the city, so it makes living in the city easier and a lot of that now is happening vertically.
“You might have a building that has a school at the bottom, it might have an education centre above it and residential up the top.
“It’s not just office or hotel or residential that we’re used to doing.
“That’s getting to the true vertical city where you can mix it up properly and live, work, and play in the same place.”
Mr Runaghan agreed, saying the days of going to a building just to work and then going home were long-gone.
“It’s almost a home away from home, because it’s a mixed-use development,” he said.
“As architects, we need to work for the benefit of a building’s inhabitants.
“Increasingly, as cities are growing, it’s more beneficial to try and merge and bring in elements together to create a vibrant city.”
The other big factor with taller buildings, Mr Mitcheson-Low said, was the part they played in establishing the city as one of global significance.
He said taller towers were often an important factor in a development’s attractiveness to overseas investors.
“People like to look at the skyline and say ‘I own an apartment in that tower’, if they are from Singapore or somewhere,” Mitcheson-Low told Business News.
“If they are going to buy, they’re not going to buy the vanilla-type designs; they are going to buy something that they can be very proud of owning a part of.”
