Glenside Botanica Apartments

Botanica is the first of several multi-storey apartment buildings planned along the Fullarton Road edge of Glenside, a mixed-use urban quarter close to the Adelaide CBD, schools, shops and public transport. Hames Sharley set the building within a walkable community of tree-lined streets, public spaces, garden areas and cycle paths, designed to be inclusive and diverse.

The footprint was developed alongside that of its neighbour, Building 2 (Grace), so that the two blocks wrap a landscaped square for residents. That square doubles as the vehicle route down to basement parking. The apartments look out over a new park and picnic grounds to the south, the city to the north-west and the Adelaide Hills to the east.

Materially, the building reads in two registers. Sandstone grounds the courtyard apartments at street level and picks up the materiality of the heritage buildings retained on the site, while a crisp white cladding takes over above. Bronze fin screens break down the facade and give balconies a measure of privacy and shading. Inside, a lobby of stone, organically tiled walls and leather opens onto naturally lit and ventilated corridors on every floor.

The development spans roughly 11,500 m2 and was delivered in 2020 on a budget of about USD 25 million.

Architecture by Hames Sharley (design architect Yaara Plaves), with DKO Architecture. Services engineering by Lucid Consulting Australia. Photography by Trim Photography.