Offering 249 apartments and an additional four townhouses, and located adjacent to the city’s second largest mall, Nest At The Hill sits proudly atop one of the highest points in Doncaster. Yet, what interested us most was at the other end of the scale: the single dwelling - the unit, and its potential in ideas for unity and community.
We were inspired by the organisational intelligence of nestlike habitats, and translated their logic into an architecture for multi-residential living. Think of them as traditional houses organised together-a clustering that offers the urban conveniences of proximity and density, while still providing the seclusion and comfort of a traditional home.
Terracotta wraps around the development, bring warmth, cohering all, while it also gives this expansive structure, a familiar sense of being close to the ground. Outcrop-like extensions give proud expression to homes and their individuality, even as they are lodged within the larger building.
To the original palette of materials, we added natural materials to clad the inserted or popout boxes such as the terracotta cladding, bluestone flooring and jute rope. This helped us to create multiple scales within the composition of the overall building creating an image of variety and difference to address Doncaster Road.