Banksia Apartments, NewQuay | McBride Charles Ryan

Banksia is Melbourne Docklands most recent building located on the northern waterfront. The location offered a unique opportunity to bring further diversity and urban legibility to this important urban waterfront precinct. MCR developed Banksia in a new parkland which was worked on in collaboration with Aspect Studios and Stutterheim Anderson Landscape Architecture. The distinct façade was developed to recall the Banksia pod, the biomimicry linking the building metaphorically to the public park in which it sits. This echoing of its natural setting was developed throughout the design of the individual apartments, the foyers, and the unique lounge rooftop of the project. In many ways the building’s architectural language has been configured in a traditional manner reflecting the great traditional element of architecture, the column, with its base, its middle and its capital. Banksia has a robust colonnade at ground level, a unique repetitive middle and a distinct and playful top.