By Emma Young
An ambitious $138 million, 51-storey building near Perth Zoo known as the “timber tower” secured development approval this week in defiance of the local council’s recommendation.
The recommendation prompted a biting comment from the developer condemning Western Australia as having “the longest and most tedious planning process in the country and the fewest project starts of scale.”
Environmental marvel, or overdeveloped and undercooked? Time will tell.
The Joint Development Assessment Panel on Thursday overrode the City of South Perth’s recommendation to refuse C6, which promises to be the world’s tallest hybrid-timber building and Western Australia’s first to be “carbon negative”.
“JDAP and WA more broadly have set a standard of excellence for tall buildings in WA, signalling that we can, and will, strive for better,” said Grange Development founder and director James Dibble, welcoming the decision.
“C6 will establish a new benchmark for environmentally conscious design.
“The built environment accounts for 39 per cent of global emissions, and our industry is perilously lagging in innovation to address this global challenge. Our aspiration with C6 is to shift the focus towards a more climate-conscious approach to our built environment, rooted in science and engineering.”
Of the building’s 237 apartments, more than 70 per cent would be one or two-bedroom and none of those would have their own car bay, but would share a provided 80-strong fleet of electric vehicles.
The building will use a “green” concrete mix and extensive timber in the structure and also feature an EV-capable parking lot, playground, urban farm and a food organics, garden organics recycling scheme – implemented privately, as the City of South Perth does not support FOGO.
Despite all this, the city’s officers called the 4-8 Charles Street proposal an “over-development” that had not addressed the criterion of “design excellence” that the local planning scheme requires to approve buildings exceeding local height restrictions. They also questioned its environmental credentials, noting a lack of plans for the viability of planned landscaping and saying the design did not mitigate factors including heat, leaving residents reliant on air-conditioning.
“Whilst the City acknowledges the presenter’s aspiration and focus for this project is to create a building that makes you feel good, the City is required to assess the proposal against the relevant planning framework, which does not include ‘feelings’ as a due regard consideration,” they wrote.
Grange Development said in a statement that this area was the state’s most dense and consulted-on activity centre and the building aligned with all its objectives.
It said the city’s concerns about sway and wind impacts were baseless and solar fins would provide the optimal balance between daylight and views, with enough shading to mitigate heat.
“A detailed planting schedule was provided along with a maintenance program detailing how we intend to care for the on-structure planting and urban farm to ensure their flourishing,” the statement said.
“We addressed this and the aforementioned points in a State Design Review Panel meeting three response document. [The panel] accepted the letter but then informed us they wouldn’t circulate it to the panel members to review, despite the panel indicating their willingness to receive clarification.
“The recommendations ... don’t seem to be even remotely linked to design quality or design excellence, all of the panel’s feedback and requirements have already been met in numerous redesigns at previous consultation meetings to get to this point.”
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