Location: Sydney, Australia.

Architect: fjmt.

Wonderland is a new development situated at the southern gateway to Sydney’s CBD, completing the urban renewal district of Central Park on the site of the former Carlton United Brewery. The development offers a transition from city use and scale to the fine grain terraces and warehouses of Chippendale. Its form is a definitive urban design response, enhancing the outcomes of the masterplan provided at the time of the design competition by offering a diverse ground plane, additional park space, sun access, and amenity in one of Sydney’s most densely populated urban environments. The development’s form is integrated into a layered curvilinear profile responsive to the varying street and building alignments. This sinuous geometry defines a significant north-facing public space not envisaged in the masterplan, while maintaining the transitional green space on Wellington Street.

The new open spaces and curvilinear built form create a memorable eastern gateway into the Central Park from Regent Street. The building offers an unprecedented diversity of residential typologies, avoiding a monoculture of residents. It features an exclusive residents’ lounge that can be booked for private functions and meetings, offering greater amenity for dense urban living and acknowledgement of changing patterns of living and working. The highly articulated facade facing Central Park’s Chippendale Green creates a warm, textured backdrop to city life. The landscape approach provides a green extension of the ground-plane into the lower two/three levels of the proposal through vertical planting of the screens to both the garden apartments and within the public space. The materials palette of terracotta, metal, and glass provides contemporary reference to the existing masonry buildings of the site and responds to the new neighboring developments. Overall, Wonderland offers a diverse and dynamic form that invites exploration of the ground-plane and public domain, creating a sense of community and reinforcing the traditional materiality of Chippendale.

Photo credit: Rodrigo Vargas, Brett Boardman, Martin Mischkulnig, Simon Wood.