Newcastle East End Mixed Use Building / SJB + Durbach Block Jaggers + Curious Practice
Text description provided by the architects. Having emerged as a future-focused and truly livable urban locale, Newcastle is a city reinvented. The recent completion of three new mixed-use buildings each designed by one of Australia’s leading architecture studios for Stage 1 of the Newcastle East End development, reflects significant innovation in the design and planning processes that will shape the city’s continued growth.
Through a series of interviews, the architectural team comprising SJB as Executive Architect in partnership with Durbach Block Jaggers and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer was selected for their demonstrated capacity to deliver exceptional mixed-use buildings and their astute approach to working in complex heritage contexts. The overarching site approach developed by the architects was based on their collective ambition to create a protected civic space in the center of the site that would offer urban diversity, retain historic fabric and work in dialogue with the city surroundings.
With the design for the site and each building beginning to take shape, the architects periodically presented the project to Newcastle City Council’s Urban Design Consultative Group over the course of 2017. Consulting with a team of architects who had taken the time to understand the nuances of the city meant that Newcastle City Council became allies in the design process. As a result, a number of parameters outlined in the approved master plan, which would have likely set the constraints of a design excellence competition, were reconsidered so that the buildings could better respond to the immediate site and surrounding context.
This approach has directly shaped the success of Newcastle East End Stage 1. At Newcastle East End, three leading architects have been offered an opportunity to work in a truly collaborative way with input from the local council, setting an exciting precedent for the development of major sites across NSW. In regional areas undergoing rapid growth and simultaneous development across large sites, Newcastle East End Stage 1 demonstrates a way of making new places that echo the rich grain and fabric of cities that have developed more slowly.
