190
Tarakan Street Housing

190 Tarakan Street Housing

This is how trees hold memory. Tarakan Street is the redevelopment of part of the former 1956 Olympic Village in Heidelberg West. The State’s brief called for a connected residential and community neighbourhood comprising 130 tenure-blind social and affordable homes. The history of the project site is honoured through the retention of twenty mature canopy trees planted during the establishment of the Olympic Village. New buildings are carefully configured around these trees so that their scale, shade, habitat and memory endure. The pale brickwork, which unifies the three buildings, acts as a backdrop to these trees and recalls the blonde brick of the Olympic Village. Tarakan Street is welcoming – there are no fences, no barriers between communities and the space of the street is deliberately blurred with communal. A series of new parks and landscape rooms provide generosity and amenity to a neighbourhood where it is currently missing. This shared spatial infrastructure is deliberately intended to bring people into a common asset and to expand and enrich the sense of community. At the centre of each new park, shade structures evoking suburban sport courts and cricket nets will become covered with climbing plants – proxy trees that host communal spaces for cooking and gathering.

Year 2019–2023
Location Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country / Heidelberg West VIC
Client Department of Families, Fairness and Housing
Collaborators NH Architecture, Bird de la Coeur Architects, Tract Consultants
Builders Besix Watpac, Landscape Plus
Awards AIA Victoria. Commendation for Urban Design, 2024
Project Team Dylan Gilmore, Marijke Davey, Mark Jacques, Nick Ng
Photos Diana Snape
Year 2019–2023
Location Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country / Heidelberg West VIC
Client Department of Families, Fairness and Housing
Collaborators NH Architecture, Bird de la Coeur Architects, Tract Consultants
Builders Besix Watpac, Landscape Plus
Awards AIA Victoria. Commendation for Urban Design, 2024
Project Team Dylan Gilmore, Marijke Davey, Mark Jacques, Nick Ng
Photos Diana Snape