For every sound urban proposition, there is a need to understand the landscape first. The most memorable places connect people to their land and they do so with great subtlety and without complication.

Manly is an ancient place of land meeting water and its archaic nature has been understood by its occupants for thousands of years. More recently, the connection between that which has been developed within the abundant nature has been usurped by the now-familiar desire for personalising view and aspect.

We have sought to provide an example where there can be seen a connection between the everyday human uses of spaces to the landscape in which they are set. Sunlight, orientation, the ground’s topography and the beach and the ocean are all considered as relevant prompts to the outcomes presented in the plan.

Open space and built form is therefore judged to be balanced with the architecture proposed and such that the spaces between buildings offer an awareness of the broadness of the landscape; the latent beauty of nature in a way that arrests people’s connection with it.

The buildings on South Steyne deliver a horizontal view outward from the centre and across the surface of the ocean and its flanking peninsulars. From outside the proposal there is welcoming of the public eye into the development. The Wentworth Avenue entry to the development presents an opportunity for delivery of space as a theme. Subtly, such a space is design to draw people into the site’s public and private.

Wentworth Avenue also presents the street-form in an historical context belying which exist a powerful parallel series of spaces as would be another pedestrian street; thus forming an internal uninterrupted line-of-vision from west to east within the entire development; enabling a constant connection to the infinite horizon over the ocean-view.

The proposal therefore takes prompts from the original consent but delivers a project which is imagined as a project that connects people to the landscape. It does so through its spaces and forms in every opportunity that has been able to be harvested from those that have sat dormant until discovered through our observations and our designs.

Glenn Murcutt and Angelo Candalepas
28 August 2020

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Render: Mogamma