Calibre — Cooper Street Apartments

The Project

Calibre is an eight-storey boutique apartment building on a 313 sqm site at Cooper Street, Surry Hills, 18 luxuriously appointed apartments with ground floor retail and basement parking. Koichi Takada Architects designed a building with an undulating timber batten screen facade, a Japanese-inflected concept that deliberately blurs inside and outside. On a street of Victorian terraces and warehouse conversions, it stands out, which was entirely the point.

The Challenge

A 313 sqm inner-city site leaves almost no margin for error. The intricate curved facade and timber batten screen system needed serious value engineering to remain buildable without gutting the design intent. On the planning side, I had to navigate the DA process and a subsequent Section 96 modification through City of Sydney Council, which required careful negotiation on a site this constrained. And Icon Oceania expected a premium product; they were not interested in compromises.

My Approach

I managed Calibre across its full lifecycle, from DA lodgement through to handover and defects resolution. That meant running the development approval process, managing the S96 modification, procuring and tendering the building contractor, negotiating contracts, and then administering the construction contract through to completion. I worked closely with Koichi Takada's team on design management during construction, making sure the facade detailing and interior quality held up under the pressure of a tight site and programme. This project ran concurrently with the Vibe Hotel Darling Harbour for the same client, so I was balancing two very different building types at once.

The Outcome

The finished building is one of Surry Hills' most distinctive residential addresses, proof that boutique scale and architectural ambition can coexist on a constrained site when you get the process right. Running this project end-to-end, from planning through construction to handover, alongside the Vibe Hotel gave me a rare depth of exposure to the full development lifecycle. It sharpened my instinct for where projects go wrong on tight sites and how to keep them on track, lessons I draw on constantly at Yaxley Studio when advising clients on complex inner-city work.