2020 National Architecture Awards: National Award for Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing

Jury citation

Napier Street for Milieu, a small, speculative apartment building for a boutique development company, represents a clever, contextually responsive design with unusually fine-grained detail for a project of its type.

The mass of the five-storey block is split by an open-air atrium in the centre of the lot. This intimate yet dramatic communal space allows each dwelling to have a dual aspect and, with generous bridges spanning the atrium, also serves as the vestibule to all front doors. Planters integrated into balustrades and a warm materiality of timber and face brick immediately give this multi-layered space a domestic feel. The brickwork is an ingenious combination of as-found and sawn-finish, laid in a variety of bonds to make subtly textured surfaces.

A mix of double-height townhouses and stacked single-height apartments addresses both the street and the rear lane. Large sliding doors behind balustrades offer full-height openings to the street, allowing living spaces to become deep terraces. Foregrounding civic and community values in multiple housing and celebrating the enduring qualities of modernism, Napier Street is emblematic of a new spirit in apartment buildings.

Project credits

Architect Freadman White; Builder Atelier Projects.

Napier Street for Milieu is located in Fitzroy, Victoria, on the land of the Wurundjeri-willam people of the Kulin Nation.