Glenside Monarch Apartments

Glenside is a unique, mixed-use urban 17.1ha development site set within tree-lined streetscapes, public spaces and is close to shopping, schools, public transport and the Adelaide CBD. Designed as inclusive and diverse, this walkable community has endless amenities, walking and cycle paths, and garden spaces that connect the whole community.

Monarch Apartments follows Botanica and Grace in the development of the Fullarton Road frontage. Naturally-ventilated resident parking is accommodated on the first and second floors creating a broader podium level wrapped by apartments to the north, east and west. The podium is designed to reflect the townhouses to its East, maintaining the two-storey scale of Banksia Street. In materiality, the podium is darker than the tower above, drawing warmth from the earthy tones of sandstone and brick. The sandstone, like Botanica and Grace, also draws on the heritage materiality across the site.

The tower’s reduced footprint is highly efficient and its orientation designed to make the most of the exceptional views to the community park to the North, Adelaide CBD to the north-west and the Adelaide Hills to the East.

Key moves and principles

01 – Respond to mass and scale of surrounding built form

• Address Banksia Street with appropriate double-storey height to respect the existing townhouse development on the eastern side.
• Adequate setback of tower to Banksia Street to reduce impact of built form at pedestrian level
• ‘Frame’ the park by bringing forward the tower form on the north boundary directly opposite the existing apartment development.

02 – A point of difference

• Create a unique presence through materiality.
• Balance the aesthetic to be cohesive with the existing development but also give the building a character of its own.

03 – Look towards future development of the site

• Consider the constraints of future development:
• Access
• Built form/Massing
• User demographic
• Maintaining site-wide core principles