Planningxchange

In PX112, our interview guest is Jessica Lee, a principal architect at Fender Katsalidis Architects (https://fkaustralia.com). Jessica discusses the ‘Alba’ project, the conversion of a 1970’s former office building into 150 rooms of age appropriate housing (retirement accommodation and aged care). The site is located within South Melbourne, an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. The cost of the conversion was $125m (AU). Whilst not being significantly cheaper than a rebuild there were environmental savings according to Jessica. In the interview Jessica discusses the project from start to finish. There was the initial ‘whats the building like’, ‘’whats under the surfaces’, to scoping the logistics of conversions (very different from a vacant site), finding a suitable builder (not all high rise builders have the equipment or skill set to do this type of work), services upgrades and the intricate details of providing contemporary residential accommodation (along with the end user needs).  Jessica