This is old Brunswick, it’s industrial, and it’s run down, yet there exists a strangely endearing quality of this area - it’s people, it’s sense of community. It is a melting pot of migrant activity, everyone coming together to form one totally imperfect community.
Emerging from the success of neighbouring apartment building The Commons, Nightingale 1 is the inaugural project of the Nightingale Model - a replicable, triple bottom line housing model with an overarching priority towards social, economic and environmental sustainability.
At it’s heart, Nightingale is all about people. Its architecture serves as a catalyst to unite a group of similar values and build a community. Apartments are affordable, sustainable, and easy to live in. Purchaser engagement from early stages has allowed the building to be designed completely with the end user in mind.
Nightingale’s form is a simple response to Brunswick’s industrial heritage. Its steel framed winter-gardens respond to traditional warehouse characteristics whilst its recycled cream brick responds to the single storey single brick warehouses that once populated the vicinity. The ground floor of Nightingale is about creating engagement between the Nightingale residents and the street, whilst reaching out to the wider Brunswick community. Seating nooks and a semi public laneway to the heart of the building activate the ground floor.
Importantly, we looked beyond the drawing board to find values aligned organisations to occupy and to engage. Young up and comers Branch Studio Architects and Home.One, a not for profit who train homeless people in hospitality, look out onto Florence Street. Nightingale Housing, the organisation, are our anchor tenant looking out onto the lush fernery. Basing themselves here, allows them to take tours of the building so that future architects, city makers and residents can see and feel what its like to live in a Nightingale.
Nightingale 1 is made up of a series of meaningful architectural moments. The planning was kept simple. Materiality took precedence over form. A partments are affordable, sustainable, generous, easy to live in, and light filled. It is filled with great neighbours and good people - it is home to individuals, couples and families, from all walks of life. You know your neighbours and most have pets. Accommodating all ages without limit, you can grow old here. Nightingale is exceptional in its sustainability outcomes. It's the first building in the country to be connected under an embedded network that is 100% fossil fuel free. Nightingale is carbon neutral in its operation - no gas.
We designed the building, the electrical reticulation, the owners corporation rules and the embedded network and metering systems and the metering and sharing of the solar so that every Nightingale resident receives 100% green power.
Nightingale includes
- Passive principles achieving an average 8.2 stars
- Parking for 42 bicycles
- Car Share
- rooftop gardens
- Shared rooftop laundry
- Natural light and ventilation to all bedrooms
- Shared 18kW PV array
- Shared solar hot water system
- Shared hydronic heating boiler
- Re-use of rainwater for irrigation, laundry and shared amenities
- Recycled timber floors
- Exposed concrete structure
- Form ply joinery
- Concrete bench tops
- Hydronic heating
- Double glazed, thermally broken windows
Nightingale excludes:
- Car parking
- Air-conditioning
- Second bathrooms
- Individual laundries
- Plasterboard ceilings
- Chrome
- Toxic finishes
