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Boffins brainstorm $530m development

Marsim’s controversial $530 million project at Paradise Point has taken a step forward with its design hammered out at a thinktank last week.

The five day onsite workshop took the project’s design to a detailed level and involved leading Australian architects, urban designers and town planners.

The tam, which includes the Coast’s DBI Design, was joined by two prominent US architects, DPZ head designer Ludwig Fontalvo Abello and New York’s Walter Chatham.

The project, approved by the city council in November, will be set on a 10.8ha waterfront site at the northern tip of Paradise Point.

It raised the ire of some area residents who earlier this year unsuccessfully appealed the project’s approval.

The development will have 470 apartments and villas, private moorings, a 600swm retail precinct and open space, and is due to start early next year.

Marsim’s Queensland development director, Matthew Gollan, said that the workshop process was used frequently to design tow3ms throughout Europe.

“Generally workshops and charetes look at master plan creation rather than the finer detail of house, townhouse and apartment design,” he said.

Mr Gollan said the challenge had been to come up with a range of contemporary and functional building styles within a traditional street design seen in older postcard towns. “The workshop concept aims to compress the process, achieving within five days what would normally take four, five or six months if the team members were working in isolation,” he said.

Mr Gillan said the brief was to apply timeless town planning principles in modern architecture and to create a sense of place.

Marsim, which is linked to Murry Offord, is buying the site from surveyor Jim Handford at a cost of $51 million.

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