Olderfleet, 477 Collins Street
Olderfleet, 477 Collins Street
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Developer: Mirvac Projects Pty Limited
Designer: Grimshaw Architects
Olderfleet is a flagship commercial tower located on Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD, featuring 58,000 square metres of office and retail space spread across 40-levels. This ambitious project successfully integrates a contemporary high-tech commercial office tower (at the rear) with the famed Olderfleet Building – a gothic revival structure dating from 1890 that was once the central hub for Victoria’s wool and agriculture industry.
The Olderfleet Building was retained by developer Mirvac as a façade for its new commercial facility, the interior preserved and refurbished as a boutique office and retail space. Behind it, the new building connects to the old via a striking 25-metre atrium that has created one of the largest office lobbies in Melbourne.
Despite its size, the atrium offers what one juror described as “a really homely feel, with a lot of exchange going on.” In addition, “it remains very respectful of the heritage – the inward-facing facade [of the historic building] is part of the expression within the atrium, so its been renovated rather than reconstructed, and the building remains complete.”
The new structure, meanwhile, consists of a side-core building whose fundamental design concept is the idea of a “vertical village”, with the newly-built tower presented as three separate modules, each with dedicated lift access and double-height entry floors for each village. Large floor plates maximise flexibility and allow for outdoor terraces in each village.
Construction and design were challenging due to the site’s mid-block, hemmed-in location. Nonetheless, the interior has remained remarkably light, and the multitude of surrounding lanes that functioned historically as service streets has enabled access to car parking and excellent end-of-trip facilities that are accessible directly from street level rather than on a subterranean basis.
Other sustainability-related aspects include an array of data-collecting sensors (measuring occupancy, energy use, temperature, and light), a wellness centre, a crèche, and various food and beverage options.
Constructed during a time of COVID lockdowns, the project has devoted much effort to embracing ESG principles, an approach that has proved important in facilitating Collins Street’s re-emergence as the city’s main place of business. The number of workers in the Melbourne CBD is today probably only 60-70 percent of pre-pandemic levels, but projects like this are helping close the gap by reinventing the modern workplace as a more diverse and multi-faceted concept with a much greater focus on humanistic elements.
Typically, commercial office projects are difficult to assess for the purposes of awards programmes because they tend to offer a certain uniformity in terms of functional design and are also commonly built to exacting standards. In this case, however, the project has succeeded on a number of levels – from sophisticated integration of the site’s historic roots, to its high-level ESG credentials, its enlightened approach to workplace design, its light and open character, and its ready embrace of worker-oriented facilities. As one juror observed, it represents “a prime example of adaptive reuse and is one of the best CBD commercial office buildings I’ve ever come across.”