The Wellington Centre is a major mixed-use development seamlessly stitched into the heart of Hobart. The centre comprises specialty shops, a supermarket, car park and over 4,500 square metres of office space.

The design maintains the proportion of the surrounding streetscapes, creating a cohesive development by carefully incorporating new insertions adjacent to significant heritage buildings as a consistently scaled podium. Timber beams from an existing warehouse are envisaged to be recycled for incorporation into the new façade treatment.

The ground level retail arcade has a high degree of permeability, with three separate entrances providing pedestrian connections to surrounding streets, open spaces and two adjacent hospitals. The new arcades will provide a range of specialty retail tenancies and convenient access down to a basement supermarket.

At the upper levels, the larger office components are set back, articulated by a contemporary composition of intersecting volumes and externally expressed circulation elements. This approach seeks to minimise the impact of a significant extension to an existing car park which is absorbed within the complex.

The Hobart City Council will own the seven new levels of car spaces which connect to the Council’s Argyle Street Car Park and are accessed via the existing vehicle entrance and ramps. The car park is constructed of flat concrete floor plates to allow for future adaptation to alternate uses without major structural intervention.

An aerial linkway to the Royal Hobart Hospital was incorporated into the development to facilitate Department of Health and Human Services offices and medical consulting services within the office spaces.

STATUS:

Construction 2012

JAWSARCHITECTS were engaged by prominent Hobart developer, Sultan Holdings to design a major mixed-use complex on a vacant site within Sullivans Cove in Hobart.

The development, an important urban repair project, will transform the existing open car park into a building complex which offers new and exciting links and public spaces, giving access to a wide variety of commercial, retail, hospitality and entertainment uses, all located over a large underground public car park, with residential apartments above.

The new buildings along Montpelier Retreat have been designed to reflect the scale, pattern and materials of the historic Salamanca precinct in a contemporary manner and will create new life and activity at the street edge.
A significant new public space will be created, to be known as ‘Cottage Green’. Here the opportunity will be taken, using any archaeological remnants, to portray the story of the early days of settlement, encounters with the local aborigines and the development of ‘New Wharf’ and Salamanca Place.

The upper levels of the complex are set well back and are not generally visible from the streets surrounding the site. The apartments occupying these levels have been sculpted and fragmented so that when viewed from distant positions in the Cove, they will merge with the finer grain of residential roofs behind.

STATUS:

Planning Approval Received June 2009

The original work to this corporate office focused on refurbishment of the public foyer space and boardroom. A sculptural wall was inserted into the tenancy, becoming a threshold between private, semi-private and public spaces. The form of the wall in the reception area is a series of planes which push out from the wall to create a dynamic interface with the public.

The wall modulates natural and artificial light in a variety of ways. Light sources are accentuated by utilizing screens to filter and bounce light into these changing planes. A ceiling pelmet acts as a light shelf and a double glazed translucent glass wall runs past the boardroom allowing connection to the workspace whilst maintaining visual and acoustic privacy.

The language of this redevelopment was used as a catalyst for another office refurbishment five years later.

Working within the confines of a single office, this component explores the prospect of the workspace as a consolidated joinery installation, a folding plane. The existing column provided a point of reference from which a continuous planar element wraps, turns and folds throughout the space. The folds provide for the necessary functional and storage requirements of a contemporary, corporate workspace, whilst subtly defining the public and private zones.

A sense of transparency, warmth and strength is imbued in the materials used which compliment the existing corporate colors.

STATUS:

Completion December 2005

PHOTOGRAPHY:

Ray Joyce