Clarkson
Town centre, design guidelines, landmarks, main street, planning, urban design.
In 2002 this was an aspirational urban design project for the time for a new suburb town centre in Perth’s northern suburbs. The project sought to be the first of its kind through the creation of a town centre that stemmed from the new train station. The design included the creation of a main street with versatile buildings that could serve the needs of both commercial and residential. The scope of work included the instigation of design guidelines and the design of key community related buildings within the subdivision.
The design service provided by Neil Cownie included the provision of the commercial feasibility studies, architectural building type design, and urban planning.
Neil carried out this project while director at O&Z Architects & in conjunction with Taylor Burrell town planning.
CLIENT BRIEF
Our client was Urban Pacific, a subsidiary of Macquarie Bank, who brought their expertise and leadership to the project. Working as part of a team that included town planners, and the various disciplines of engineers, we were challenged with obtaining development approval for the proposed new suburb of Somerly.
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
This project was designed within a large team of consultants over a number of years before it finally achieved approval for development. Unfortunately, and quite incredibly, after all that work with good intentions and excellent solution, the site was sold to another developer who managed to somehow ‘undo’ all that good work and proceed to develop the site outside the bounds of the approved scheme and design guidelines. So, what you now see today does not reflect the originally approved scheme for development.
Our approved scheme included indicative designs for the landmark sites that included a primary school, church, public square with civic buildings, suburb entry housing, general house plans and mixed-use building typology. Our scheme allowed for variation within a strong framework for aesthetic consistency.
