OMA has revealed its proposal for the Southbank by Beulah Tower competition, which will present a new mixed-use lifestyle precinct of over 220,000-square-metre with 23,000-square-metre of public programs. 

The $2 billion project will include luxury apartments, commercial offices, 5 star hotel, an entertainment centre, technological display centres (including BMW Experience Centre), world class retail, cultural precinct and public green spaces.

Image © MR.P

Six top international architecture firms were listed on the shortlist for the competition, including Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with Fender Katsalidis, Coop Himmelb(l)au with Architectus, MAD Architects with Elenberg Fraser, MVRDV with Woods Bagot, OMA with Conrad Gargett, and UNStudio with Cox Architecture.

Image © OMA

The shortlisted teams have presented their visions today at a public symposium held by Southbank by Beulah. The winner of the competition will be announced in the coming weeks. 

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After the presentations, OMA has shared its design acting as a 24/7 mixed-use vertical city, the design was presented by lead designer and OMA Managing Partner David Gianotten at the Future Cities symposium in Melbourne.

Image © Frans Parthesius, courtesy of OMA

OMA's Beulah Tower reaches at 345-meter hight and encompasses a total of 255,000-square-metre area, the project would be the largest building that OMA designed after CCTV.  OMA’s proposal addresses to Melbourne's complex city factors and stretches the boundaries to elevate public life in the center of Melbourne –  the tower as an urban experiment, a living lab, a vibrant vertical city.

Image © OMA

"The city of Melbourne is renowned for its livability –  a moderate climate, beautiful surroundings, a thriving cultural life – but it is marked by a curious paradox: people hardly live in the city," said OMA in its project description. 

"Melbourne is one the most sprawling cities in the world; it covers three times the area of London with just a third of the population. The Southbank is perhaps the area in Melbourne in most need of an injection of life."

Image © Frans Parthesius, courtesy of OMA

OMA’s design scheme proposes a tower stemming from a base that acts as a 24/7 mixed-use vertical city with cultural, commercial, educational and social program elements bound together with the more generic programs of retail, food and beverage. 

Image © OMA

Creating a vivid vertical city, visitors will see highways of movement through large express escalators, shortcuts by elevators, and laneways to wander on through normal escalators, stairs, and voids. The Base is adapted to the outline of the site and then tapers back to a slab 100m above the city. 

In this volume, OMA scatters different programs strategically throughout the tower to create dynamic vertical movement, and are rendered distinguishable from both inside and outside through façade elements of dichroic, polarized, and see-through colored metal mesh laminated glass. 

Image © OMA

The 345-metre tower features arches at street level, inspired by the Italianate arcades of Melbourne, invite the public into a vertical wonderland of discovery: a sheltered extension of both the street life surrounding the building, and of Melbourne itself. The Base includes the BMW Experience Centre, positioned on the corner of Southbank and City Road.

Image © Frans Parthesius, courtesy of OMA

The tower is divided in three sections: office, hotel and residential. The office block sits right above the Base so that a significant number of lift banks is no longer necessary for the vertical transport in the hotel and blocks. 

The flexible floor plates offer grand views of Southbank and City Road and include green areas on each floor on the corners facing the east and west ends. 

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The hotel block consists of 17 floors including two amenity levels at the top and bottom of the block. The residential part of the tower is deliberately situated at the top to capitalize on views and daylight. 

The gentle twist at the top of the residential component not only provides the tower with an iconic and elegant silhouette but also enhances the quality of the residences with views towards Port Philip Bay and the Royal Botanic Gardens. 

Image © OMA

The project is led by Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten, Australia Director Paul Jones and Project Architect Roza Matveeva, in collaboration with Conrad Gargett and Arup. 

Image © OMA

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