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

Jury citation

Gillies Hall is a striking new student housing project that advances environmental performance and mass timber construction. Within these highly deterministic frameworks, Jackson Clements Burrows Architects has designed comfortable and thoughtful student spaces. At each level, banks of rooms have been pulled apart to widen the double-loaded, day-lit corridors and transform them into central gathering spaces. Between the two primary blocks are other more sticky spaces for cooking and socializing. Cross-laminated timber, exposed wherever possible, is used confidently for joinery as well as structure, making warm, inviting spaces. Expressive steel sunshading, redolent of bark, wraps the project and responds to the scale of the campus. In Gillies Hall, the architect has given strong character and identity to student housing.

For more coverage, read the review by Christine Phillips from Architecture Australia May/Jun 2020.

Project credits

Architect Jackson Clements Burrows Architects; Project team Graham Burrows, Simon Topliss, Danielle Pacella, Thom McCarthy, Gretel Stent; Builder Multiplex; Services , structural, acoustic and fire engineer, Passive House and ESD consultant AECOM; Passive House certification Grün Consulting; Signage and wayfinding Büro North; Quantity surveyor WT Partnership; Landscape consultant Glas; Town planner Ratio; Building surveyor Steve Watson and Partners.

Gillies Hall is located in Frankston, Victoria, on the land of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation.