A gateway building for a small town with big gaps to fill.
Bicheno is one of Tasmania's most popular east coast towns, but behind the visitor economy sits a community under pressure. Affordable housing is scarce, seasonal workers struggle to find somewhere to live, businesses close because they cannot find staff or tenancies, and the commercial heart of the town has limited room to grow. The Burgess Street site - a prominent corner at the southern entry to the township - offered a rare opportunity to address several of these challenges at once.
Our design proposes a three-storey mixed-use building containing ground-floor retail and commercial tenancies, visitor accommodation, and over 25 residential apartments designed to suit locals and seasonal workers. The form is curved and organic, taking its cues from coastal landforms and changing shape to respond to the slope of the site and the streets around it. At the corner of Morrison and Burgess Streets, the building presents a strong, welcoming form - a gateway to the town when approached from the south.
Coastal in character, practical in ambition.
The upper floors are envisaged in naturally finished timber - shiplapped boards to solid elements, battens to glazed areas, decks and balustrades - a material palette that references the qualities of nearby beach shacks and will age and patina with the salt air over time. At ground level, floor-to-ceiling glazing opens the commercial spaces to the street, with stone paving extending through a public arcade and forecourt on Burgess Street. The cantilever of the upper floors creates sheltered public space along the frontage - a new piece of streetscape where there was none before.
The building height steps down with the slope of the land, and the form is articulated along both street edges to break up its bulk and allow existing trees to be retained. Parking is managed from Morrison Street to the rear, keeping the highway frontage clear for passing traffic and larger vehicles. The commercial tenancies on the ground floor are intended to generate the lease revenue needed to support the affordable residential apartments above - a model in which the economics of the building directly serve the housing needs of the town.
