Nightingale Umarkoo Wayi

Umarkoo Wayi means “all of us” in Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung language.  We are grateful to the Wurundjeri Elders for the name of this building because it encapsulates a core principle of Nightingale: community.  We derive deep satisfaction from many aspects of the Nightingale model, but the deepest satisfaction comes through the diverse, supportive and highly functional communities that develop in the buildings – Umarkoo Wayi is such a beautiful encapsulation of community and its place.

We observed a couple of things about the Coburg site which formed a strong conceptual basis for Umarkoo Wayi.  Sydney Road, as the name suggests, was the original road to Sydney from Melbourne.  It has gone through many phases, but we were interested in this significant original purpose and the way that resulted in some grand and ornate facades commensurate with its importance as a connection between Australia’s two largest cities.  Consequently, we emphasised the three-storey presence on Sydney Road with a highly-modelled and decorative red-brick façade and a grandly-scaled awning.  Sydney Road is a very long commercial strip, and we wanted to place Umarkoo Wayi as a grand and handsome marker on this stretch.  Another aspect of the site that interested us is that from Sydney Road it immediately transitions to low-rise, suburban residential neighbourhoods.  We reflected this transition through the dramatic wedge-shaped form of the building, but also by transitioning from a large building to a residential scale through modulated detailing and increased intimacy to the rear of the site.

Context is obviously very important, but each building we design is also predicated on its use and its users. Nightingale is predicated on doing more with less – but these are buildings where people live and settings for supportive communities. We don’t see doing more with less as limiting, we see it as a rich driver of design.  Our practice is interested in how the human qualities of great domestic space can improve the experience of any building, and we will often do this through careful deployment of colour and texture.  Using the limited palette of materials necessary to make our Nightingale buildings sustainable, durable and importantly, affordable, we make sure that our design is energised colour, by texture, rendered in crisp, simple and playful forms and accompanied by Amanda Oliver’s lush, textural gardens.  It is the synthesis of all these elements which imbue the buildings with a personality and enable its inhabitants to make a connection to it.

Umarkoo Wayi meets many sustainability metrics but more importantly, in everyday use it makes you think about energy use and ways to actively reduce it using awnings and solar blinds, external circulation with natural light and fresh air and a stair which is an attractive alternative to the lift. Small things which support a sustainable mind-set and a different way of thinking about how we can live gently on the planet.

Umarkoo Wayi energises a forlorn part of Sydney Road, planting the seed for an urban ecology to build around the community in this sentinel building.