The Arbour Boutique Apartments

The Arbour Boutique Apartments is a 4 level building with a basement. It consists of a mix of single and 2 bedroom units. Small blocks of land provide challenges with regards to maximising design space whilst considering space for functional amenities and regulatory requirements. 

Examples of these challenges include ensuring sufficient car spaces in the basement and sufficient fire egress. Our team, alongside the Architects, modified initial designs to include a secondary access path out of the basement to ensure regulatory requirements were met for fire exits, whilst still meeting the carpark requirements for 11 apartments.

The building was also designed close to boundaries. Often when this occurs, the construction team require access to the neighbours’ properties. Our team decided the use of pile and shotcrete for basement retaining walls would mitigate impact to the neighbouring residential property and Council footpath.

The building has an impressive cantilever design in the North West corner. This means Levels 1 to 3 extend out over the building underneath. Our engineering team had to ensure the design accurately transferred the load back over the smaller podium level.

Stormwater and drainage is also a challenge on smaller blocks. Our Hydraulic, Civil and Structural Engineering teams worked together to determine the best designs for stormwater and drainage. This included, designing pipes around a large quantity of transfer beams in the slab, and also working closely with the Architect on the detention tank. It was important to ensure the detention tank had sufficient capacity and drainage. This meant designing the detention tank at podium level rather than basement level to ensure invert levels match-up with street level and stormwater drainage.



The Arbour Boutique Apartments are an impressive example of great design by architects and innovative engineering by our team to achieve the desired outcome for the client.