The world has changed and architecture must change with it, that’s why we resolve issues, not briefs. We are a design-led practice guided by an ethical imperative: every element of the built environment must be viewed through the lens of a climate crisis.
Drawing on a long track record of built work, depth of experience and specialist expertise we seek to design architecture that makes a positive contribution to communities, cities and the environment.
Philosophy
Fraser & Partners was born of a desire to address the challenges presented by our environment with a process that is slower, deeper and fundamentally driven by discovery. We are interested not only in thinking about solutions to global problems, but doing something about them.
Regeneration comes by addressing our process, production and consumption, and investing in nature and ecology. This means going beyond minimising negative impact to making positive contributions. It means putting architecture back in the service of the city, and communities. It means design that gives new life to landscapes – revitalising local species of flora and fauna. Our legacy is built not just on big ideas, but meaningful action.
Methodology
We’re animated by the desire to reimagine and reconstruct environments worth inhabiting. We address the demands of our times by integrating wellness at all scales: materials, people, buildings, communities and cities. Drawing on the modernists who have always inspired us, we intervene at the point that nature and technology converge, harnessing both as tools to design architecture as a user interface.
Each project is driven by a bespoke platform, this forms a series of non-negotiables and ambitions defined in partnership with our clients to help realise the best triple bottom line outcomes. Navigating multiple sectors, the platform centres around 8 core pillars that guide us along the pathway to regenerative practice.
Capability
We aim to approach each project from the position of our client and the perspective of future inhabitants, creating architecture that responds to the unique constraints presented by each brief.
Our portfolio is testament to the success of this approach: we have over $4B AUD of constructed work and a further $3B AUD in planning or development. We work across diverse typologies – from multi-residential buildings and master plans, hospitality spaces and hotels, commercial offices, and interior architecture. Our design philosophy, people, experience and process allows us to create original design solutions that not only look good but work for all stakeholders of the built environment: the client, the community and the end users.
Fraser & Partners has the unique ability to adapt to changing project demands, expanding and contracting resources seamlessly in response to project requirements, through an established pool of experiences resources. Our core design team have the innate ability to undertake work across offices efficiently and effectively, adapting to varying degrees of output and meeting the short term increase in demand in an expedient manner.
Working through our internal procedures and processes, we are rewarded with a flexibility to transcend across each project and effectively manage our time to achieve our strategic objectives.
We consider our buildings total environments where ecology, technology, and people converge and landscapes and species are regenerated in concert with the built form. Architecture is a user experience and there are no borders between design, technology and community in our spaces.
Our projects have demonstrated potential to improve returns, work within strict floorplan and cost considerations. They provide truly inhabitable environments that excite and engage their owners and tenants.
Marina Mirage
Marina Mirage is set to be a world leading tourism and residential precinct that sets a new direction for regenerative design. Its living facades fuse architecture and landscape; a hybrid where buildings literally breathe.
This is a model community, deeply sustainable with zero carbon homes, hotel and restaurants set into the wondrous gardens of a littoral rainforest. Through a series of dramatic arrival experiences, Marina Mirage envelopes guests, residents and visitors alike. Arriving via Seaworld Drive reinforces the master planned vision for the Spit.
An extraordinary public realm expands out across the Broadwater. People not cars are prioritised in this urban context. The front door opens into a 3-storey internal rainforest while visually connecting guests to the marina beyond. Public spaces wrap the site as vaulted arches, forming a connecting navigation system that acts as intuitive and experience-driven wayfinding from front door to marina boardwalk.
Inspiration for the vaulted arches is derived from European waterfront cities; aqueduct architecture creating future-focused infrastructure. A series of graduated residences share the values of a progressive and dynamic new community where collectivism is celebrated. A new architecture evocative on the Byzantine era delivers material rich modernism while celebrating Australian design culture and craft.
74 Seaworld Drive, Main Beach, QLD
Project cost
$500M AUD
Area 54,000 sqm
Typology Resort, Mixed-use precinct
Hotel keys 110
Operator Confidential
Completion 2026
C6 Perth
At 189.1 metres, C6 will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber residential building. It will be constructed using 42% mass timber – the result of extensive research with timber and structural experts – along with green steel and ‘greencrete’. The mass timber utilised in the building’s structure can be sustainably regrown in less than 1 hour, sequestering 10.5M kg of carbon.
C6 will be carbon neutral at completion and continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere through considered material selection, planting and energy efficient technology. The building features an embedded network, powering the building with 100% renewable energy, while the innovative elastic transport strategy will provide bike share and an EV car-share fleet of 80 Teslas.
C6 sits in concert with the site’s pre-settlement history and its connection to the local Indigenous peoples and native landscape. Fostering social capital, a 500 sqm podium and forecourt will be shared by residents and the wider community alike as 20% of the site area is given back as publicly accessible space. The landscape reconnects people and aids in re-habitation of the endangered Black Cockatoo.
An educational experience centre, playground, public art, towerto-plate restaurant and urban farming will contribute to year-round amenity while invigorating the public realm.
6-8 Charles Street, Perth WA
Project cost
Area
$350M AUD
40,000 SQM
Typology Multi Residential
Completion 2027
Mondrian Gold Coast
Studio 54. That’s all you need on your CV as a hotelier. Ian Schrager took everything he learnt from catering to the world’s jet-set at his legendary 70s New York nightclub and distilled it into his iconic Mondrian hotel brand. Schrager pioneered the “boutique hotel,” creating a whole lot more than just somewhere to bed down for the night. His hotels offer transformative lifestyle experiences and ooze style and opulence. But they also manage to make you feel right at home.
So our brief was simple: to design a building that befits a legend, while capturing all the things that make this precious stretch of the Gold Coast so unique. We saw an opportunity to find a new way of thinking about Australian coastal architecture, in this instance, “bare-foot luxury.”
A place as special as Burleigh Heads cries out for an architectural response that forges an intimate connection between the transcendent natural surroundings and the built environment. The undulating profile of the two towers we’ve designed reflects the voluptuous lines of the sparkling sand dunes and imposing headland, while archways soaring above vast rooms and arcades at ground level echo the ancient caves that honeycomb the coastline.
So in the Mondrian Gold Coast, we’ve made the transitions between inside and outside seamless. To be standing within this space in dappled shade cast by architectural forms overhead, watching the waves crash on white sand below is to be immersed in this pristine environment.
50 The Esplanade, Burleigh Heads QLD
Project cost
$380M AUD
Area 65,000 SQM
Typology
Hotel keys
Resort, Multi Residential
200
Operator Mondrian
Completion 2024
Winn Street
Since time immemorial, the relationship between people, plants and animals has been one of dependence and content coexistence. However, since colonisation, humans have become increasingly isolated from plants and animals in their natural habitat, while flora and fauna have been pushed out of urban settings.
Winn Street’s design re-establishes the local ecosystem as a cohesive, holistic environment for plants, animals and insects. This enables people to live once again within the native landscape, co-existing in harmony.
Winn Street’s proposed twin towers are perched above a three-storey podium, creating a new destination for work, life and play in the heart of Brisbane’s vibrant Fortitude Valley. Filled with residential and public offerings, the towers incorporate nearly 400 light-filled build to rent apartments, a work club, leisure & wellness, retail and hospitality.
With frontages to Winn, Ann & McLachlan Streets, the ground plane crafts a welcoming and inviting experience. The site is pedestrianised through careful planning and an abundance of dining and shopping, challenging Winn Street’s existing prioritisation of cars and other traffic. Public art activates the ground level, with a unique precast concrete waffle grid on the exterior complementing the reclaimed timber grid and integrated planting inside.
The first level houses a work club and communal spaces designed to support flexible, post-pandemic working. A permeable podium top allows the city to breathe with its native gardens and pool terrace providing vital urban access to greenery and outdoor space.Private residential rooftop spaces feature a display of Australian native planting, pet friendly outdoor areas and fresh produce gardens.
The architectural form responds to its surrounding context through controlled passive design and integrated technology. The architecture combines a high tech / low maintenance approach to design and performance which minimises its environmental impact through reduced reliance on energy consumption.
725 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley QLD
Project cost
Area
Typology
$200M AUD
49,000 SQM
Build-to-Rent
Completion 2025
Seaworld Drive
Accentuating high-quality design and sensitive landscaping, Seaworld Drive takes a responsible approach to luxury accommodation. Situated alongside the Spit, large-scale hotels, retail destinations and the Marina, the nuances of the site required an ambitious design that would boost connectivity, cultural engagement and protect surrounding biodiversity.
Structurally, the architectural forms take a light-touch to the landscape, hovering on stilts. This design sees nature free of the buildings — leaving the ecosystems of the foreshore to thrive unimpeded below. Cross-laminated timber is used throughout, which extends the life of the timber, absorbing and storing carbon for longer, shielding the atmosphere.
The project transforms the harsh traffic-ridden streets of Seaworld Drive into a walkable public piazza that hosts world-class dining experiences inspired by local Indigenous seafood dishes. Pedestrian paths have been integrated to connect the piazza with Main Beach and the proposed Aboriginal Cultural Centre. The gateway to the Spit, Seaworld Drive is a beacon of respectful design.
The vision drives an enduring appreciation of natural rejuvenation and recognition of rightful land owners. Beyond simply a place to stay, this innovative take on luxury accommodation gives visitors an utterly immersive experience that sees them truly cherish place.
Seaworld Drive, Main Beach, QLD
Project cost
Area
Typology
Hotel keys
$400M AUD
40,000 sqm
Resort
200
Operator Confidential
Completion TBC
Grote & Gouger
Grote & Gouger is a vibrant urban precinct celebrating lifestyle, wellness, culture and landscape. It’s also Adelaide’s most significant climate positive development, integrating the urban built environment with its natural surroundings.
Adelaide is unique in the world as the only city built inside a park. Extensive landscaping is incorporated throughout the precinct to improve quality of life for residents and visitors as well as create habitats that function as sanctuaries for birds and pollinators.
Five towers, between 15 and 28 storeys, will be completed by 2032. This will create 600 new homes (15% to be affordable housing) and over 3350 sqm of space for the local community.
The design draws inspiration from the rich heritage of Adelaide, specifically emphasising the principles of order, symmetry and the repetition of elemental and locally sourced materials. To achieve the highest levels of regenerative design, comfort and resilience are prioritised.
Efficient use of daylight, natural airflow, passive shading systems and indoor-outdoor living areas address human needs and the impacts of climate change. The commitment to carbon neutrality commences in construction, continuing into operations.
A pedestrian-focused street interface, laneway and central plaza create a dynamic experience, with programmed activities aligned with the hotel, work club, wellness offerings and public gardens.
237 Grote St, Adelaide SA
Project cost
Area
Typology
Hotel Keys
Operator
Completion
$300M AUD
76,000 sqm
Hotel, Multi Residential
200
TBC
2028
Humans long to be in nature. It refreshes the senses, calms the mind and grounds us. In this state we do our best work – at the office and in life. So why is biophilia an afterthought in the design of so many workplaces and office buildings? At 388 William, a meaningful commitment to nature and its mind-body benefits are built into the bricks and mortar.
388 William places paramount importance on regenerative design, pursuing industry-leading accreditations and harnessing the latest environmental technology. With its blend of offices and 5-star hotel, the building empowers community, culture and connection to thrive. The design shatters conventional architectural hierarchy by blurring the boundaries between one space and the next.
A new hybrid where work meets hotel – WOTEL – provides guests with flexible workspaces within rooms that go beyond a place to crash and a mini-bar to raid. Guests mingle with office workers at the bar, at the gym and pool. Facilities are shared with the community so for as long as they’re in residence, hotel guests become Melburnians.
The building’s form presents as a visual dichotomy with one mirrored face looking out across the central business hub, while on the opposite facade, a cascade of greenery tumbles from stepped terraces towards street level. The anchor for the City of Melbourne Queen Victoria Market Precinct Renewal Master Plan, 388 William embodies Melbourne history just as it’s part of its dynamic future.
386-412 William Street, Melbourne VIC Project
Typology
Use, Hotel, Commercial
The Queensbridge Building
Born from an investigation of place, the Queensbridge Building references Southbank’s heritage, from time immemorial as a meeting place where fresh and salt water collided through to post-settlement and the more recent industrial era.
Using real and raw materials and rewilding through endemic planting, the architecture and landscape characterise the natural environs that once occupied the land. Industrial era influences become evident through bronze details and steel framed windows.
Parallel to this, the building reflects a new experience economy. A hotel in the podium is accompanied by a work-club, rooftop bar and restaurant, fitness and wellness offerings while the tower includes over 350 short- and long-stay apartments. From turndowns to room service, residents and hotel guests enjoy membership to ‘Queensbridge Social’, a curated platform bringing together amenity and community.
Complementing the Queensbridge Building, a proposal to the City of Melbourne crafts a vibrant reimagining of the undercroft below the Kings Way overpass. Activated with food trucks, basketball court and public art commissions, the 4000 sqm proposal also offers EV charging and a sunken amphitheatre, setting the tone for the community-centric neighbourhood.
Located with a flood zone, the design incorporates a series of water catchments that remove surface water and filter it through an urban wetland rich with endemic species.
88 Queensbridge Street, Melbourne VIC
Project cost $400M AUD
Area
46,512 SQM
Operator Hannah St Hotel by TFE Hotel keys 190
Typology Hotel, Multi Residential
Our trusted partner Elenberg Fraser is an integrated design practice operating across the Asia-Pacific region, where buildings prove that good design leads to economic, social and cultural benefits.
The outcome is sensory, architecture that people can feel, not just see. Architecture that makes people think, acknowledging the origins of architecture and its plethora of influences, both ancient and modern.
Through their process of interrogation, invention and collaboration they produce experiential spaces that demand reaction.
Premier Tower
The responsive approach to precinct regeneration sets a new bar for mixed-use developments. This building, sitting directly in front of Southern Cross station (the first thing people see when arriving) seeks to anchor the increased westerly shift of the CBD, heralded by the regeneration of Fishermen’s Bend and Southbank.
The twists and turns of this new project belie its pure and simple, first principles rationale, Occam himself would be proud. Premier Tower is the articulation of our research into how to work with individual sites and their climatic constraints, brought together using parametric modeling techniques. The complex form, a vertical cantilever – is actually the most effective way to redistribute the building’s mass, giving the best results in terms of structural dispersion, frequency oscillation and wind requirements.
For those more on the art than science side, we will reveal that the form does pay homage to something more aesthetic – we’re going to trust you’ve seen the music video for Beyoncé’s Ghost. As far as this project goes up, our focus also extends outwards – with retail space as well as hotel rooms and apartments, the project is designed with a more long-term view to urban design, creating a self-sustaining development.
Project cost
$351M AUD
Area 85,000 sqm
Typology Hotel, Multi Residential
Hotel keys 172
Operator Movenpick
Completion 2020
138 Spencer Street, Melbourne VIC
Horizon
To capture the endless summer, living spaces need to reflect a coastal ethos. And that calls for biophilic design. Fluid geometry and a playful approach to the built environment reflect the building’s setting and reinforce the reason people choose to live here. The horizontal planes of the building extend beyond its core, echoing the long and undulating lines of the nearby beach, boardwalk and pier, and riffing off the sharply delineated horizon line that defines the sparkling bay.
Here, it’s like living amongst the dunes. Sweeping balconies are heavily landscaped with native coastal vegetation. And warm yet expansive interiors are kitted out with natural materials and flooded with light and air, recalling the very best bits of a seaside holiday minus the midges and sand in the shagpile. The best home in Frankston also comes with the best views in town. We’ve pinched the sides of the building inwards, to make sure all the apartments, including those at the rear of the property, have expansive views of Port Phillip Bay. Because what’s the point of a beachside home without a sea-view?
Best of all, if the plan is to ‘downsize’, here it doesn’t mean compromising… on anything. So the building includes shared executive facilities that residents can book when the real world intrudes on their idyllic way of life. And why waste space on a garage? Horizon comes with its own man-cave in the basement, complete with a workshop and any carefully curated wine collection is safe in a climate-controlled cellar.
On the rooftop, studios can be booked for yoga or pilates classes. With plunge pools and hot tubs on the roof overlooking the bay, and BBQs and a rooftop dining room for hosting parties with a panoramic view of the Melbourne skyline, why would anyone want to leave?
Horizon recalls the time when Hollywood stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire strolled the foreshore in 1959 as they filmed On the Beach. Then, as now, this stretch of the Mornington Peninsula was the place to be.
1 Plowman Place, Melbourne VIC
Project cost $40M AUD
Area
8768 sqm
Typology Multi Residential
Completion 2023
380 Londsdale
Decidedly cosmopolitan, 380 Lonsdale Street seems to have everything that Melbourne needs. This project puts the mixed in mixed-use, taking cues from our client to bring a bit of Singapore-style precinct urban planning and a tropical twist to this prominent site in the CBD.
380 Lonsdale is actually two towers in one. One houses a hotel, the other apartments, and both are united by a low-level podium with eroded massing that contains separate pods for office space, a business club, dining and health facilities and retail. These floating pockets break up the volume of the podium with the functions themselves. On top sits a jungle-like communal garden for hotel and apartment residents, sending foliage cascading down the façade. This untamed, green space includes pocket parks and landscaped areas, a veritable urban oasis.
This isn’t just about the high life though: the building stays down to earth with lots of street level interaction, including an extension of Timothy Lane to create a new café and dining thoroughfare that cuts through the site, adding to Melbourne’s world-renowned laneway culture. This big picture planning means that the line is blurred between street, tower and laneway.
The forms of the towers appear as silver ripples emanating from the heart of the site. Moulded bay windows – a contemporary update for this classic device give the building’s surface a vertical rhythm, a waterfall that pours into the garden beneath.
380 Lonsdale is an urban intervention that brings a touch of the tropics to Melbourne – and ticks all the right boxes for the city in the process.
380 Londsdale St, Melbourne VIC
Project cost
$300M AUD
Area 98,500 sqm
Typology
Hotel, Multi Residential
Hotel keys 312
Operator VOCO
Completion 2020
Waterline Place
The master-planned Waterline precinct development in Williamstown is bringing a new generation of apartments and townhouses to the historic maritime precinct. Like all of our projects, luxury is here is much more than skin deep. This development is a game-change, pushing the boundaries of suburban living with a new prototype, which will change the way we understand multi-residential living.
We wanted to minimise the negative aspects of apartment living: the trek down those anonymous corridors from the lift to your front door. Our solution was splitting one building into two, which gave us dual building cores that fittingly serve a dual purpose. Firstly, the corridors are shorter with more lifts, which means more friendly and accessible shared entry spaces that foster a community feeling rather than a gulf between neighbours. Secondly, this approach gives us more valuable building perimeter, meaning that certain apartments gain a dual frontage.
Inside, these homes are places to store the treasured possessions and mementos that you have built up over a lifetime. Kept deliberately like blank canvases for a downsizing demographic, there are plenty of opportunities to customise the space, with feature joinery and other adaptations available. The same robust marine materials used on the exterior are transposed to the interior, with quality timber finishes and textured surfaces that will only improve with age.
Waterline Place, Williamstown VIC
Project cost $154M AUD
Area 80,000 sqm
Typology Multi Residential
Completion 2024
Oxley + Stirling
A building informed by its sought-after views, Oxley & Stirling sits on a picturesque bend between two reaches of the Brisbane River. Harnessing the unique outlooks across to the CBD and botanical gardens formed a building that would not work anywhere else. With the opportunity to create views for days, we could see that this exemplar of riverside architecture called for a touch of yesterday’s grandeur. Sometimes it’s best to return to the classics.
The form was shaped by those views, created to maximize every apartment angle to give all residents the best possible access to stunning panoramas. Each living room projects out past the next, fanning themselves out towards the view. From the moment you open the front door, you are presented with uninterrupted vistas, accentuated by bay windows and framed by fileted, curved glazing. In itself, the reflective, flowing façade mimics the sinuous turns of the adjacent watery behemoth, while the warm gold green colour pulls in the surrounding natural landscape. Twisted screens offer fine grain detail to the building’s surface while enhancing the columns that wind up the structure.
Shared spaces echo the glamour of days gone by, with a modern twist. Pulling up to the building you’re welcomed by the epic proportions of a porte cochere with large columns and dedicated drop-off zones. Inside, the lobby gleams with brass balustrades and rods. Up on the second floor is a library as well as a contemporary interpretation of a coffered ceiling.
A rooftop pool area gives you the best seats in the house for soaking up the 360° with a decadent combination of infinity pools and landscaped areas with all possible visible barriers removed. Exiting the lift, bluestone paving submerged in reflection pools guides you towards a viewing platform ; the level also includes a gym and outdoor yoga space. Cinemas and private dining mean you can have a great night out with only a lift ride home.
9 Christie St, South Brisbane QLD
Project cost
$60M AUD
Area 15,000 sqm
Typology Build-to-Rent
Completion 2019
107 Cambridge
Located in the former factories and warehouses of Foy & Gibson, this project shares a part of Australia’s history. Melbourne’s first department store, Foy & Gibson was part of the southern capital’s coming of age – a glamourous 19th century style temple on Smith Street that drew on the chic addresses in Paris and the United States, which soon spread into many other Australian cities. The nearby industrial facilities were no less elegant, designed by William Pitt, their red-brick facades have been landmark buildings in Collingwood –now one of Melbourne’s most desired inner-city neighbourhoods – ever since.
We have put our own mark on this site, converting the Cambridge Street warehouses into sleek apartment residences. Like Mark Foy before us, we looked to international paragons for inspiration – New York City’s meatpacking district served as a model for contemporary, loft-style living. Rather than compete with the ornate heritage shell, we wanted to create a modern architectural counterpart, that would at once harmonise with the level of detail while offering contrast with the historic built form. The answer is a crisp, white intervention – a deceptively simple addition that upon closer inspection reveals delicate folded screens, reminiscent of Japanese artforms and matching the intricacy of the neighbouring brickwork.
We have emphasised the trademark volume of warehouse apartments – high ceilings and large, glass windows to pull in light, as well as flexible, modular spatial configurations. A predominantly monochrome palette adds to the sense of space and light, accented with detailing in industrial black metalwork and glints of aged brass.
The apartments also contain many of our own, distinctive touches. Repetition of form recalls ‘sculptures in the field’ such as Anish Kapoor’s mirrored public objects. Floating circles can be found in brass handles in the kitchen to bathroom mirrors, while suspended tubes support the vanity unit. Bespoke joinery is built around frames, creating useful and elegant ‘objects in space’ that are permeable rather than monolithic, such as the kitchen bench cum dining table, and full-height storage. Metallic details play with contrast: black metal frames surround perforated brass doors.
Interweaving local and global narratives, Cambridge Street blends industrial heritage with contemporary comfort and bespoke detailing. These are cosmopolitan environments fit for connoisseurs of international, urban living.
107 Cambridge Street, Melbourne VIC Project cost
Aspire Melbourne
Aspire Melbourne, our new multi-residential project in Melbourne’s West end, responds to the presence of nearby Flagstaff Gardens, Melbourne’s oldest park, by intertwining local stories to represent the origins and future of the precinct. In the mid 19th century, this part of the city was Melbourne’s flourishing commercial centre: a diverse urban precinct home to the Indigenous Kulin nation, Chinese immigrants enticed by the Gold Rush as well as settler populations. This project embraces the distinctive elements of this site-specific identity, creating a thoroughly local architectural narrative.
Like the imposing flagstaff erected on the site to communicate between the town and the port, King Street will anchor the West end’s renaissance, signaling its return as the beating heart of Melbourne. The concave and convex silver glass facades reinterpret the fluttering of the flag against the flagstaff. The moulded form appears as if volumes have been carved out of the tall, slender tower. The undulating curves of the podium echo the rolling hills of this, the highest point of the city, while the park has become part of the building itself, with heavy planting creating green bands of foliage across the lower surface.
Transcending time and space, the past present and future of this significant site come together in King Street, re-establishing Melbourne’s West end as the beating heart of the city.
295 King Street, Melbourne VIC
Project cost
Area
$400M AUD
50,000 sqm
Typology Multi Residential
Completion 2023
Illura
It’s no secret that everyone covets corner apartments. More light and better views, right? Well, not so with Abode, our Melbourne CBD residential apartment tower, where everyone gets a view: it’s democracy in action.
Look closely at the wave-like 55 storey form and you will realise that each of the horizontal and vertical waves consist of individual rooms articulated as protrusions, creating the effect of a set of drawers pulled out at random. These drawers gives residents the chance to give their home an individual identity as well as coveted corner views up and down Russell Street, challenging conceptions of the homogeneity and limitations of apartment living.
Each apartment has a presentation to the street, creating a collection of variably expressed individuals. The building achieves a softness that skyscrapers can’t achieve, because they need vertical facades; Abode318’s three-dimensional curve is an innovation in construction technology. In addition to articulating individual apartments, the curved form also has environmental benefits – art and science.
The undulation affects wind pressure, which determines the fluctuating amplitude and breaks up downdrafts to protect pedestrians. Abode is clad in low-emissivity glass that appears as a pink blush from the exterior, yet is clear from the interior. The base of the building incorporates industrial design through the detailing of the decorative mesh screen that surrounds it. Inside, follow the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur through the white and silver communal interiors. Silver and white travertine walls adorned with wall reliefs become Ariadne’s thread, leading up to the apartments designed by Disegno.
87-101 Roden Street, Melbourne VIC
Project cost $20M AUD
Area 15,000 sqm
Typology Multi Residential
Completion
2013
We’re creating a road-map to regenerative design. Each project is driven by a bespoke platform, with a series of non-negotiables and ambitions defined in partnership with our clients to realise the best triple bottom line outcomes.
Navigating multiple sectors, the platform centres around eight core pillars that guide us along the pathway to regenerative practice.
01 Climate positive
Our buildings make positive contribution through negative carbon, achieved through intervention at all stages. Each one must achieve carbon neutral status during construction. This is a non-negotiable action taken in partnership with our clients and collaborators.
Emphasising renewable, local materials and embedding considered landscape elements turns our buildings into carbon sinks: climate positive outcomes and lower ongoing operating costs.
We embed technology within our developments to monitor and improve energy consumption throughout their life-cycle. We also take an active role in negotiating long-term renewable energy supply agreements, expanding the capacity of local providers.
02 Performative architecture
How we design healthy environments has shifted dramatically since the onset of the pandemic. Twenty years of development has been compressed into two, forever changing the ways in which we work, live and play.
Our architectural approach explores a raft of passive design principles such as thermal performance and heat control, access to fresh air, high performance building envelopes, views and vistas, and lighting. These proven considerations are combined with the latest thinking around ventilation, technological integration, healthy materials and contactless mechanisms.
Salutogenesis
True well-being is not about cure, but prevention. Fraser & Partners creates salutogenetic environments that promote collective and individual physical and mental health. Salutogenetic environments offer people what they need in order to feel good, not just feel better. They foster creative expression, access to nature, social connection, movement and activity, and rest.
We understand these needs change depending on the demographics of users, and we actively consider how to make our buildings inter-generational and inclusive, remaining attentive to the diverse needs of different groups.
04
Regenerative landscapes
Regenerating landscapes requires an understanding of climate and context alongside the re-establishment of nature as central to the built environment. For each of our projects, we prioritise the planting of native endemic species to restore the local pre-European ecology of the site. We create total environments that in turn provide vibrant ecological habitats for wildlife and sanctuaries for birds and pollinators.
On-site water strategies mitigate downstream impacts and reduce land pollution. Rainwater harvesting, biodiversity management plans, indoor vegetation and community gardens are but some of the many opportunities to be explored on the pathway to regenerative practice.
05 Value chain
Each building is much more than the sum of its parts. We care about where things come from and how they’re made. Understanding the provenance of every material, every element that goes into our work, allows us to design from the macro to the micro scale, including direct to manufacture elements. This knowledge enables us to create designs that don’t just break-even but give back.
Drawing on the legacies of modernism, The New Standard is our demonstration of iterative design. During the design process, the Fraser & Partners team utilises benchmark data and a suite of custom details – each manufactured to rigorous requirements and adaptable to a range of projects and typologies.
06 Technology
At Fraser & Partners, architecture is user experience – we treat people, architecture and communications as integrated assemblage, rather than separate elements. Our projects have a strong technology backbone, which means that we can measure and analyse almost every aspect of a building’s performance from light, to air quality to heat mapping.
Multi-dimensional sensors create buildings that literally learn to perform better, adapting to the behavioural patterns of users to optimise consumption. Software interfaces for building systems add another layer of adaptability, giving managers the capacity to transparently access data and manually adjust settings.
07 Social and culture
Our architecture puts people at the centre, using design to facilitate connection and community. Respecting the land on which we operate, from time immemorial to more recent history, we learn from the stories of Australia’s First Nations peoples, which connect place, environment and cosmology.
We undertake partnerships and engagement processes with local community representatives and the Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways of Country. This is vital as we shape the flora and fauna of endemic landscapes and enable them to repropagate and thrive.
08 Industry leadership
Our collaborations actively seek to demonstrate industry leadership. Projects embody the principles of advocacy, future value creation, ethical decision-making and contributing meaningfully to the built environment sector.
The seed of each project is a specifically commissioned piece of research. Conducted by industry specialists and university researchers, this in-depth exploration of the vital challenges we face when designing total environments cements the collaborative focus of our process. Research findings are shared upon project completion for wide-reaching benefits.
Acknowledgment of Country
Fraser & Partners acknowledges Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We acknowledge that Countries, knowledges and customs were never ceded, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
