31 Nelson St, Abbotsford
This seven-storey office building is located in the threshold between Abbotsford’s industrial and residential precincts. The site neighbours a small pocket of single-fronted, single storey Victorian worker’s cottages and is across the road from the large CUB brewery site. The building’s form itself is an interface: between the finer grain low-rise residential zone to the south and the more robust, large-scale industrial zone to the north.
The building is divided into four blocks, organised around three external staircases connecting to landscaped rooftops. The transition in scale from one to seven stories is achieved through a series of cascading landscaped terraces. The ground floor hospitality tenancy opens and connects to the street, and to the existing reserve to the south.
The project takes on a minimal material palette of concrete, glass, galvanised steel, solar panels and significant greenery throughout. The façade design is a pragmatic response to the site’s orientation and climate. Fixed vertical galvanised steel blades flank the eastern and western façades. A galvanised exoskeleton on the northern façade boasts double banks of angled solar panels – generating power while shading the building.
COLLABORATORS
Client: Banco Group
Landscape: Coolth Inc
Visualisation: Pointilism