Tri-Star Printers

Aerial Perspective of Tri Star

TriStar approached ST&AR to do a study on the feasibility of developing their current premises into a new mixed use building to accommodate the print works and a small commercial component on the ground floor with offices and residential apartments above.

Aerial Perspective of Context

The proposal defined for the client the buildings form in terms of the allowable building envelope as defined by the City’s land use requirements. Access, parking, space planning and fire escapes were taken to a level where they informed the buildings overall function and their impact on the useable areas could be assessed. 

Rear View of Tri Star

The building was modelled as a translucent box with solid slabs and the vertical circulation as coloured stacks. Setbacks on the various levels at the street and common boundaries needed to be well understood at this level of design and the block model worked to reveal these.

The site footprint is an L-shape combination of 3 smaller sites. The model revealed that while development of the wider side of the site was feasible, the thinner side would lose bulk due to setbacks increasing with height and this reduced the overall feasibility of the project.

Approach

Departures from the building line setbacks for this section were a possibility, but not guaranteed. The client preferred a departure free design proposal and therefore sought to acquire the adjacent site in order to build a more regular efficiently shaped building.