By Mikayla Van Loon
Between the natural stone elements and concrete infrastructure the Lilydale and Mooroolbark skyrails stand as a feature of each town.
Now the projects have been recognised in the Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Architecture Awards for 2023, nominated in both the public and urban design categories.
The collaborative design process between BKK Architects, Kyriacou and Jacobs Architects was a unique achievement, particularly throughout the pandemic lockdowns.
BKK Architects principal Simon Knott said it is a real privilege to have this work recognised in the “premiere awards in the state”.
“We’re really delighted to be shortlisted and we’re a little bit hopeful we might actually get an award, which would be good,” he said.
“Those projects are years of plodding away and particularly this one, everyone who worked on it, there were so many challenges through lockdowns and the program never changed. It was delivered on time, onto the budget.
“It all worked as if Covid hadn’t happened and that’s really testament to the hundreds of people, literally hundreds of people that have worked across it, from engineers to builders.”
By working from a “ground up” approach, Mr Knott said the designs of both stations wanted to encapsulate the “village type atmospheres” of each town and “deliver a project that felt like it was part of that fabric”.
“We talked about being on the edge of the city, particularly in Lilydale. It’s either a gateway to the Yarra Valley or a gateway to Melbourne depending on which way you’re going,” he said.
“Putting these huge bits of infrastructure through the middle of these quite lovely townships, how do you do that in a sensitive way and something that actually deals with the context.”
The philosophy behind each project was to “make those places better when we left them”, lending itself to community consultation and virtual reality designs to understand the feel of the stations before they were built.
“[We made] the choice of natural stones and more tactile materials that feel like they’ve come out of the existing public realm and grow up into the station,” Mr Knott said.
“There’s a sense of [the station] bleeding out into the fabric of the city itself, the city is part of the station, and the station is part of Lilydale.”
Using Coldstream mudstone that was hand laid by different contractors, each station’s stone wall feature differs giving them “both slightly different personalities”.
Taking inspiration from the surrounding environment in the old rail bridges near Yarra Glen but also from overseas in traditional Italian piazzas, Mr Knott said the two combine to create an iconic “urban marker”.
Wanting to incorporate the two different clock towers, Mr Knott said the idea was to draw on medieval bell towers and the concept of time as a way of “navigating the city”.
As one of 130 projects shortlisted across 15 categories, there is a lot of incredible competition.
Victorian president David Wagner said the quality of projects submitted in this year’s awards was outstanding, with sophistication noted across all elements of context, form, space, materiality, technology and sustainability.
“Shortlisting entries is an unenviable task undertaken by a select jury in response to in-person presentations and the quality of projects not shortlisted speaks volumes for those that have been,” he said.
“Those shortlisted are commonly amazing projects that have been thoroughly considered, designed and have come together to create a special outcome for the client.”
The award recipients will be announced on 16 June.
