In the current climate, many purchasers are buying into the apartment market out of necessity rather than choice. When your hand is forced into a particular housing typology, you may as well settle somewhere that is not only highly liveable, but also reminiscent of something that you’d find in a cartoon aquascape.

Cirqua Apartments by BKK Architects is a project that stands out – no small feat in the overcrowded multi-residential sector, which relies heavily on formulaic architectural codes to produce easy, low-cost, cookie-cutter products. Instead of succumb to the temptation to do things the easy way, BKK Architects decided to offer a new alternative: a series of apartments that, from the inside, strongly resemble those single-dwelling homes that are still ingrained in the collective memory, but which have become largely inaccessible to buyers below the upper strata of wealth.

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Situated on a steeply sloping block in the suburban Melbourne pocket of Ivanhoe, Cirqua Apartments echoes local character through it brick-heavy material palette and square geometries. But that doesn’t mean it blends.

The home-style apartments are fitted with large-scale, ultra-rounded windows that kind of make you want to live in a fishbowl, or at least as a speck on the inside of a magnifying glass. Or, in the words of the architect:

“Six large oculi puncture the façade, introducing formal inventiveness and reducing the overall building mass to let it sit more comfortably within its single- and double-storey context. This is also assisted by the steeply sloping site, allowing the bulk of the building to sit below the line of sight when viewed from the road.”

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Obviously, these “oculi” also mean that residents are privy to a flood of natural light, and 360-degree views of their leafy context. The architectural language established by these porthole-shaped windows – the most identifiable design features of the apartments – is continued throughout the internal spaces, where light fittings, door handles, and tiles replicate this sense of grown-up cartoonishness.

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Apartments are placed at various depths and irregular heights, contributing to their already robust sense of character. According to the architect, this volumetric composition “[replicates] the rhythm of a suburban streetscape”. It also means that there is substantial room left over for a ‘front yard’ – a further nod to the vanishing Hills Hoist fantasy.

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BKK Architects say that the apartments have been designed with a strong focus on accessibility and passive environmental control, which will allow residents the comfort associated with a family home. This speaks to the shift in the way apartments in Melbourne are being conceived - from an investor market to owner-occupier market, necessitating higher quality design outcomes.  

Through the magnifying glass windows of this unusual project, the Australian dream of yore might just appear a little closer.

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