Arena Apartments — Newcastle Beach

The Project

Arena Apartments is a 227-apartment residential development on Shortland Esplanade, directly above Newcastle's main beach and ocean baths, one of the most prominent coastal sites on the NSW coast. The $121 million project occupies the former Royal Newcastle Hospital site, a 3,650-square-metre parcel on the cliff edge. Developed by Stronach Property, designed by DWP Suters and constructed by Richard Crookes Constructions, the development comprises two buildings: a south building of eight storeys with 55 apartments completed in March 2016, and a north building of 165 apartments with ground-floor hospitality and commercial space completed in October 2017.

The Challenge

The former hospital site carries real weight in Newcastle's collective memory, and the redevelopment was closely watched across the city. Beyond the public sensitivity, the site's cliff-edge position demanded a design response that addressed extreme coastal exposure, salt spray, prevailing winds and solar heat gain on the eastern facade, while maximising the panoramic ocean views that define the apartments' market appeal. The relationship between the new buildings and the sandstone escarpment below required sensitive treatment of the interface between built form and natural geology.

My Approach

I contributed to Arena Apartments as a part-time Graduate Architect at DWP Suters while completing my Master of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. My involvement was focused on the construction documentation phase, the intensive period of drawing production where design intent gets translated into the technical instructions a builder needs to actually construct the building.

The work involved contributing to the production of construction documentation drawings and supporting the coordination of services engineers' information, including mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and fire, into the compiled architectural set. Integrating all of those disciplines into a coherent package of plans and sections is one of the most technically demanding aspects of architectural documentation, and doing it on a project of this scale while still at university gave me an education that no lecture theatre could replicate.

The Outcome

The completed Arena Apartments now define the eastern edge of Newcastle Beach and have become part of the city's contemporary skyline, visible from the Bogey Hole, the ocean baths and the Bathers Way coastal walk.

This project gave me my technical foundation. Learning how drawings are structured, how consultant information is integrated, and how a documentation set must anticipate the practical needs of a construction team. That is the bedrock of everything I do now. It is also a project I take quiet pride in when visiting Newcastle: a building on one of the best sites in my hometown, and one I played a small part in bringing to life. That hands-on understanding of construction documentation is what allows me to manage consultants and coordinate complex projects with confidence at Yaxley Studio today.