388 Barkly Street Apartments

388 Barkly Street is a collection of 11 sustainable apartments led by DREAMER, in collaboration with Breathe Architecture. The project is an adaptive reuse of a c.1930 brick warehouse encouraging sustainable, small-footprint living.

With the densification of inner suburban areas, an increasingly critical component of successful city-making, 388 Barkly Street aimed to create a generous and high-quality variation of multi-residential housing that could offer an attractive alternative to the suburban family home.

At the occupant level, the project focuses on creating a small and diverse community that supports low energy, low waste, sustainable and healthy lifestyles. Strategies include employing biophilic design, with strong connections to extensive planting, providing multiple waste streams, encouraging the use of EVs and bicycles, and amplifying connections to public transport networks and nearby parks and recreational hubs.

From the earliest discussions, the design was informed by surrounding historic housing as well as details within the existing building to ensure the renovated warehouse still connected strongly to the neighborhood character of Brunswick. Apartment widths and layouts draw from the pattern of terraced housing; window articulation from surrounding houses of the 1970s; new ground-level security screens reference the existing metal windows; and external timber fins emulate the pattern of wall niches left by the original timber roof beams.

The new building addition sits sensitively within the preserved brick shell and comprises two volumes separated by a landscaped external atrium. This helps to naturally light and ventilate the dwellings, creating a sequence of open-air, planted spaces that connect all the apartment entries and provide meaningful contact with gardens when traveling through the building.

Internally, apartments are arranged around lightwells and planted courts and feature a restrained palette of materials that is offset against the characterful existing brick shell. Priority was given to durable materials and a ‘fabric first’ approach, thereby reducing maintenance and operational costs for residents. Double-height voids and sectional play bring additional natural light into the 3-bedroom apartments, while the 1-2 bedroom dwellings have raised planted courts offering views to greenery from all bedrooms.

As part of the ambition to provide amenities similar to a more substantial house, key features include large fully-plastered storage rooms for each apartment, on-grade car parking, and a generous communal bike parking room located centrally to the building with maintenance facilities and automatic doors for ease of access.

Architects: Dreamer and Breathe Architecture
Lead Architect: Ben Shields
Directors: Ben Shields, Jeremy McLeod
Project Architects: Piers Morgan, Ben Schmideg, Mitchell Sack, Miles Ritzmann-Williams, Marie Penny, Malisa Benjamins, Bonnie Herring, Mark Ng, Madeleine Sewell