Hadid Designs "Grace on Coronation" for Brisbane

The Sunland Group filed an application on Monday with the Brisbane City Council for its proposed $420 million residential development. Sunland is calling Hadid's design "a harmonious blend of incomparable architectural elegance, vibrant urban parklands and heritage conservation ... [with] three sculptural residential towers set amongst landscaped parklands." The heritage conservation of note is the 19th-century Middenbury home that would become a cafe or gallery open to the public.

If approved, Grace on Coronation would occupy land that was home to the ABC studios until 2006, when a cancer scare led to the closing of ABC's Brisbane headquarters, even though environmental tests done at the time did not detect any possible causes of the abnormally high breast cancer cases in the preceding decade and a half. Sunland bought the land last September for $20 million and plans to start demolition of ABC studios next month.

In addition to the 486 apartments in three towers – ranging from 22 to 25-stories – the project includes 8 riverfront villas, 635 parking spaces, and 7,300m2 of public parkland.

Sunland's Sahba Abedian describes Hadid's design as petal-like, referring to the way the towers seem to open as they rise from the base. Hadid justifies this formal maneuver: "The design tapers each structure to minimize their footprint and open the riverfront to the public to create a vibrant civic space for Toowong within a new riverside park."

If approved, construction of the development would start late 2015.