Apartments 1 and 2, occupied
for the last two years by
Linda and Art and Eve and John
WestWyck occupies the building and grounds of the former Brunswick West Primary School in inner suburban Melbourne. The school ran out of students in the 1980s and threatened to become yet another example of quality inner-urban infrastructure that had lost its original function and faced the bulldozer. Instead, the WestWyck developers aimed to bring the building to new and vibrant life as an urban demonstration showpiece of sustainable development and good design. This has included engaging a landscape artist as part of the project team.
The key sustainability principles that justify WestWyck being termed an 'ecovillage' are 'materials efficiency', 'energy efficiency' and 'water efficiency'. The new dwellings are designed to high standards of energy efficiency. The water management regime is pushing new boundaries in reducing reliance on mains water and minimising the discharge from the site of water via the stormwater and sewerage systems. The construction phase has reused and recycled where possible making careful decisions about the sourcing of other building products and reducing the amount of material going to landfill. The apartments and townhouses are built as healthy homes with careful application of benign materials and finishes.
An ecovillage aims to provide an element of community. The first stage of the development will comprise a housing cluster of five new town houses on the school grounds and seven warehouse-style apartments skilfully designed into the
classrooms and corridors of the Victorian era school building. All dwellings include a private courtyard terraced area. Within the grounds there are shared productive and recreation spaces landscaped largely with local native or productive plants. Ongoing decisions about the project will be made through a body corporate.
WestWyck also aspires to relate to the local community, benefitting the local economy and making use of local infrastructure including the superb public transport options. Local workers and local tradespeople have been engaged and appliances and fittings have frequently been sourced from local suppliers.
Because it is an environmental project and because it is in a Council designated 'Urban Village' WestWyck has been given parking concessions; the project in return is committed to reducing reliance upon motor vehicle usage.
Jura Nominees (Greg Tainsh), a Brunswick builder, built five of the seven apartments within the school buildings. Another local Brunswick builder, Craig Jones, is building the sixth and Derek Maguire built his own apartment and now lives in it. All builders support WestWyck's key environmental and social principles and are dedicated to quality.
The CDM Building Group constructed the five Hunter Street townhouses. Founder and principal of CDM is Alfonso Guglielmi, a construction engineer from a building family with nearly a decade of project management experience prior to establishing his own construction company. Alfonso views himself as an innovator and has steered his company into specialising in the new challenge of sustainable housing. CDM has already completed one townhouse in Camberwell that was built to high level environmental design criteria.
Stage One of the development comprises a communal, or shared, housing cluster, five new town houses on the school grounds and seven warehouse-style apartments skilfully designed into the classrooms and corridors of the Victorian era school building.
WestWyck was one of the developments featured in the Dusseldorp Skills Forum's video series
Trade Secrets.
All Stage One apartments and townhouses have been completed, sold and occupied; two apartments have had people living in them since winter of 2002, the pioneers of the WestWyck EcoVillage. These early settlers have set up the WestWyck Body Corporate (now the WestWyck Owners' Corporation).
Stage Two has started! A brief has been prepared and three teams of architects presented master plan concepts for the Stage Two development of the site. The brief identified project objectives and details of the Stage One site development that need to be transferred and integrated into Stage Two.
In September 2008 WestWyck selected a highly innovative local Brunswick company of architects, Multiplicity, to run the design of the second stage of the project.
Move your mouse cursor over the plan for more information.
Click here for a printable version with extra details
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