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Architects: Hayball
- Year: 2014
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Photographs:Peter Clarke, Shannon McGrath
Text description provided by the architects. MY80 is an apartment tower with a confident presence in the central business district of Melbourne, Australia. Designed as a vertical neighbourhood it features retail spaces at ground level, commercial premises and apartments.
Through its distinctive form, materiality and articulation, MY80 is stitched neatly into a tight urban site. By activating the ground plane and establishing genuine connections to the public realm, the tower contributes to the city’s vitality. With 487 apartments it adds a significant residential population to the city’s centre.
Public and communal spaces enrich the activity of the tower, which offers residents a range of lifestyle services catering to a sophisticated set of high-rise dwellers. These include a lounge and external terrace, residents dining area, swimming pool and sauna, cinema and business centre on level 1, and a rooftop bar and external terrace with impressive views on level 53. The apartments are structured to be affordable, with the communal areas providing generous specialised spaces – such as the dining room with designer kitchen for entertaining on a large scale – that complement private apartment living.
The drive for more lifestyle facilities in part arises by the pressure on apartment sizes from construction and land costs. High design quality means that smaller spaces can still excel. At MY80, every last square metre is maximised from a design point of view, and what is on offer within the tower is complementary to what’s available locally.
MY80 is located in a vibrant part of the city, in close proximity to key Melbourne institutions including the Queen Victoria Market, the State Library of Victoria, RMIT University, Melbourne Central shopping complex and a number of key public green spaces. The area is rapidly changing. Recent, current and proposed high rise residential developments and increased numbers of residents are creating a high density, walkable neighbourhood unprecedented in Melbourne.
