WestWyck occupies the building and grounds of the former Brunswick West Primary School in inner suburban Melbourne.
The school ran out of students in the 1980s and threatened to become yet another example of quality inner-urban infrastructure that had lost its original function and faced the bulldozer.
Instead, the WestWyck developers aimed to bring the building to new and vibrant life as an urban demonstration showpiece of sustainable development and good design. This has included engaging a landscape artist as part of the project team.
The key sustainability principles
that justify WestWyck being
termed an EcoVillage
are:
The first stage of the development comprises a housing cluster of five new town houses on the school grounds and seven warehouse-style apartments skilfully designed into the classrooms and corridors of the Victorian era school building.
All dwellings include a private courtyard terraced area. Within the grounds there are shared productive and recreation spaces landscaped largely with local native or productive plants. Ongoing decisions about the project will be made through a body corporate.
By benefitting the local economy and making use of local infrastructure including the superb public transport options.
Local workers and local tradespeople have been engaged and appliances and fittings have frequently been sourced from local suppliers.
Because it is an environmental project and because it is in a
Council designated Urban Village
WestWyck has been given
parking concessions; the project in return is committed to
reducing reliance upon motor vehicle usage.
All builders support WestWyck's key environmental and social principles and are dedicated to quality.
By the beginning of 2008 six of the seven Stage One apartments have been completed, sold and occupied; two apartments have had people living in them since winter of 2002, the pioneers of the WestWyck EcoVillage. These early settlers have set up the WestWyck Body Corporate. The five townhouses are all sold and will be ready for occupation by autumn of 2008.
A brief has been prepared and three teams of architects have been invited to present a master plan for the Stage Two development of the site by February. The brief identifies project objectives and details of the Stage One site development that need to be transferred and integrated into Stage Two. WestWyck aims to elicit an innovative master plan and then move into the planning process in 2008.
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