Melbourne Place

Our Client came to us with an idea for Melbourne Place as the hotel that Melbourne needs.  Our task then was to work out what that was and make a setting which would support this aspiration.   Early on, we identified that Melbourne was missing a home-grown hotel – a place for and by Melburnians as well as its visitors - a host for Melbourne.

Because Melbourne Place was designed as an independent hotel, we were unconstrained by global brand standards and we could reflect our own design values, as well as the design values of our friends and colleagues from Melbourne’s rich design community.

Fixtures, fittings, lights, carpets and furniture have largely been sourced from local Melbourne makers and designers, many made specifically for Melbourne Place. Local artists have been commissioned, not simply to adorn, but to represent Melbourne culture – contemporary, sophisticated, urban, multi-cultural and grounded in the lands of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.

Melbourne Place was devised as a new hotel brand in a brand-new building, and the development of the brand and the design of the building have informed each other from the very beginning so that the identity of this hotel is expressed in every part of the physical building and its interiors.

Melbourne Place is the hotel that Melbourne needs. It has been designed in Melbourne, by Melbourne Architects and incorporating a longlist of Melbourne designers and makers and artists.

The new city building is an intriguing amalgam of the familiar and handsome brick and masonry edifices of Melbourne’s much-loved heritage heyday and the visual freshness and creative vigour of contemporary Melbourne design.

The project is a rare contemporary example of complete design, where both the building and the interiors are designed by Kennedy Nolan, who significantly, were also involved with the development of the hotel brand. The outcome of this design consistency is visual unity and a sense of seamlessness.

Sensibilities around space, volume, light, colour, texture and detail are consistent from the urban scale down to the cabinet hardware lending a sense of substance, a complete vision, each element reinforcing and amplifying the unique character of Melbourne Place.

Melbourne Place is a collaborative undertaking involving a panoply of local designers, makers and artists and this has resulted in a project which is a direct reflection of Melbourne’s unique design community. The effect is visually fresh but uncannily familiar and this is because it is an authentic representation of place – it is a hotel which could only be made in Melbourne.

After the intensive investment in carbon that was spent to construct this building, its important it stays there for a good long while and this underpins our principal approach to sustainability – to make a building which is of sufficient quality that it has longevity.  Part of this quality includes simple things like openable shutters in the guest rooms and passive solar shading to glass provided by the pre-cast overhangs.

Given the aspiration for the building to be around for a long time, its operational carbon footprint is a vital consideration, so the ESD metric which has been adopted is carbon neutral in operation.

Melbourne Place is by Melbourne Architects and has a comprehensive inclusion of local designers and makers and artists. The effect is visually fresh but uncannily familiar and this is because it is an authentic representation of place – it is a hotel which could only be made in Melbourne.  It has an embedded domestic approach to its design which is unique amongst the hotel stock in Melbourne.

Melbourne Place Hotel contributes to Melbourne’s liveability and attractiveness through close attentiveness to the city’s urban grain and a careful consideration of human scale on a large urban site. The building is bound on two sides by the eponymous Melbourne Place, a typical Melbourne laneway unusual in that it also provides an address to a significant Melbourne building, the Kelvin Club, and that it opens at both ends onto Russell Street forming an island.

Cognisant of the opportunities in such fine-grain urbanism, we ensured all facades were active and appropriate. A double-height scale was adopted to all ground floor edges, alongside a deep red-brick palette custom-developed with Kraus bricks. The building is tactile and materially civic in quality and scale. We considered shelter, planted habitats, and the uniquely exciting nature of laneways—the sense of discovery and city-ness they evoke.

The ground plane is porous and welcoming, composed of a series of high-quality, distinct edges. There is an active north-east corner with balconies, operable shutters to every guest room animating the façade and suggesting the presence of people, a function-room balcony in the tree canopy, and a rooftop restaurant—its super-scaled “eyes” gazing north as a friendly, visible presence looking back at the city.

Melbourne Place is carbon-neutral in operation and incorporates a suite of sustainability initiatives. Its passive façade design uses deep reveals and brick massing to modulate internal temperatures. Guestrooms feature operable shutters enabling cross-ventilation. Locally sourced materials reduce embodied carbon, while interiors prioritise natural finishes—oiled timbers, terrazzo, and raw linen.

Indigenous species inform the landscaping, and mechanical dependency is minimised through integrated thermal comfort strategies. End-of-trip facilities and efficient waste systems support the building’s low-impact, high-performance ethos.

Melbourne Place champions locally sourced materials, which were embedded into the design process early on. The use of local materials significantly reduces the embodied carbon and transport distances associated with construction.

The following materials were sourced within Victoria: -Bricks, Krause – Stawell  Precast concrete façade panels, AusCast – Dandenong South Sussex tapware  Mobi grabrails  Dulux Paint Bishop Master Finish, Render Auburn Woodturning, timber joinery handles – Thomastown Jardan furniture – Scoresby Mark Tuckey furniture – Thornbury Grazia & Co furniture – Highett Volker Haug lighting – Brunswick East Ross Gardam lighting – Brunswick Zachary Frankel, furniture  Robert Gordon, hotel room basins – Pakenham Robert Gordon, events level crockery – Pakenham.

The following materials were sourced within Australia:  Jarrah timber veneer, joinery, wall and ceiling linings – Western Australia Woven Image, Acoustic Echo Panel – Gloucester, New South Wales Henry Wilson, Brass Bottle Bracket – Sydney, New South Wales Merwe, Bronze Basin – Queensland Interia joinery handles – Tasmania Corten cladding – Victoria and New South Wales.

ADCO constructions reported on their construction and demolition waste throughout the construction of the hotel. It was reported that 94% of demolition waste was collected and recycled, and 95% of construction waste was collection and recycled. Considering the immense impact that the construction industry has on carbon emissions, acknowledging the end-of-life and recyclability of materials is key to addressing each of the lifecycle stages defined in BS EN 15978.