Macquarie Park is one of the most active and sought-after growth areas in metropolitan Sydney.
It’s a hub for working and living: a rapidly developing activity centre that is a satellite to the CBD.
The residential neighbourhood is being transformed from flats in walk-up blocks to significant apartment developments. The development, by ARM Architecture with Scott Carver, comprises four towers with 600 apartments and ground-floor retail. Some are luxury; some are affordable housing.
ARM has designed two of the four towers, one on Waterloo Road and the other on Cottonwood Crescent.
Waterloo Road is a pair of towers linked at the top and bottom. It contains large apartments and penthouses. Its unique and detailed shape is inspired by a moon gate, traditional in Chinese gardens, and a Chinese dragon. We cut away the dragon from a basic form, leaving a building with a terraced, dragon-shaped space.
The terraces are floor-to-floor heights and translate directly into the shapes of the balconies and apartments, creating both individuality and continuity. The space between the towers has a rounded moon-gate quality.
Chinese moon gate
We cut away the dragon from a basic form, leaving a building with a terraced, dragon-shaped space.
Waterloo Road
Cottonwood Crescent
Cottonwood Crescent has serviced apartments and the Silkari Club, which is for longer-stay residents.
The building is a simple form wrapped in an outer screen that has patterns derived from the ripples that appear in water when something falls into it.
We dropped an object into water digitally, recorded the ripple patterns, then translated them into a façade. On the roof, they create a swirling pergola above the rooftop bar.
Between the two buildings is The Close, a shared retail-fronted road. It links to an existing park and future development sites to the north.
Currently the project is pending a development application.