Nightingale Village is six apartment buildings on one Brunswick block, each designed by a different Melbourne practice and all built by a single contractor under a shared masterplan. It delivered 203 apartments and about eight commercial tenancies, and it finished in 2022.
Project Scope
The six buildings are Evergreen by Clare Cousins Architects, Leftfield by Kennedy Nolan, CRT+YRD by Hayball, ParkLife by Austin Maynard Architects, Urban Coup by Architecture Architecture with Breathe, and Skye House by Breathe. Hacer Group built all six and Fontic project-managed all six, which is what kept a six-architect precinct from becoming six unrelated buildings.
Every building is fossil-fuel free with no gas connection at all, running on shared embedded networks buying 100 percent GreenPower. Thermal performance sits between 7.9 and 9.1 NatHERS stars against an Australian minimum of 7, with 14 to 29 kW of rooftop solar per building. Skye House, Leftfield and CRT+YRD share a 40,000-litre rainwater system.
Parking was cut precinct-wide in favour of more than ten car-share vehicles and secure bicycle storage, a reduction the council accepted because the site sits directly on the Upfield bike path and Bulleke-bek Park. That same argument had failed on Nightingale’s earlier single-building projects.
At least 27 apartments, roughly 13 percent, were pre-allocated to community housing providers Housing Choices Australia and Women’s Property Initiative across five of the six buildings.
Why It Matters
The delivery model is the transferable part. Nightingale Housing is a registered charity that caps investor profit, sells to owner-occupiers selected by public ballot, and runs each building through a separate entity. Urban Coup went to a pre-existing co-housing group instead of a ballot and is described as the first vertical community of its kind in Australia.
Five of the six include “Teilhaus” units, a compact typology with shared facilities aimed at affordability. The scheme was approved in February 2019 as seven buildings by seven practices; as delivered it is six. It has since taken a World Architecture Festival housing award and a ULI Global Award for Excellence.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Nightingale Housing |
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| Owner / Client | Owner-occupiers by ballot, with Housing Choices Australia and Women’s Property Initiative |
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| Architect | Clare Cousins Architects; Kennedy Nolan; Hayball; Austin Maynard Architects; Architecture Architecture with Breathe; Breathe |
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| Consultants | Openwork (Landscape and Urban Design)
Fontic (Project Management) |
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| General Contractor | Hacer Group |
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| Status | Completed |
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| Delivery Method | Design-Build |
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| Funding Source | Private |
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