The aspirational redesign of the 100-storey building’s car parks was inspired byCity of Melbourne planning reforms announced in March. If passed,the reforms would require all high-rise developments to be more sustainable and include the potential to retrofit parking areas.
Fender Katsalidis architect Shem Kelder helped design Australia 108 in 2008 and said at the time that the building’s open-air car parking,built on a podium on the lower levels of the building rather than in a basement,was controversial but proved a good model for adaptation.
“There is so much potential to be unlocked in the adaptive reuse of parking spaces and this extends beyond more conventional solutions,like office space or apartments,” he said. “We think that with the right location,scale and use there are solutions that are sustainable,and maybe even commercially viable.”
The building has 568 parking spaces,but Kelder said people were less likely to need them in a future of self-driving cars.
“I’d love to see it happen in the next decade,” he said. “That’s what this whole thing was about,trying to crystal ball into the future and see what is the potential for these kind of spaces within our CBD environments in particular.”
Kelder pointed to the Melbourne rooftop farm Skyfarm,which is on top of a car park,and commercial indoor farm Urban Green,in Sydney,which uses a basement car park to grow microgreens and sprouts that are delivered by bicycle to nearby restaurants.