Hengyi | Building Up Chicago

Light House, right, and next-door neighbor Victoria One, left, combine for Melbourne’s finest one-two punch.

You’ve seen a lot of Australian construction photos here lately. But there comes a time when things need to be shaken up. Will I stop posting construction photos from other countries? Oh, heavens no, don’t be silly. I still have 100s of them to go through. What I mean is, it’s time you see the best of what Australia has already built.

And I mean The Best. I’m going straight to the best building from the first city we visited in Australia: Melbourne. This is Light House. What makes it my favorite? It’s tall (natch) and slender and shiny, with vertical striping that creates diagonal waves along the facades, and on clear days it’s bluer than the bluest seas.

Light House is a 69-story tower at 442 Elizabeth Street in the Central Business District. (“CBD” is a little redundant; I didn’t get out much beyond Melbourne’s CBD, so 99% of what I saw of the city is in the CBD.) Designed by (no surprise here) Elenberg Fraser, its 627 apartments overlook Queen Victoria Market, making it a fabulously convenient location. Light House is a development from Hengyi — we just took a look at their Swanston Central project — and was built by Multiplex. Work wrapped up in August, less than two months before our visit, so we just missed the grand opening.

13/10 would live here

Swanston Central will deliver 1,039 new apartments to Melbourne.

We’re taking a flight back to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia today for a look at another big apartment tower.

Swanston Central will rise 72 stories at 168 Victoria Street in the Central Business District. It is being developed by Hengyi, a hometown Melbourne company with headquarters just a few blocks from the Swanston Central site. (On a side note, Hengyi developed one of my favorite towers from our entire Australian visit — Light House — which I hope to feature in a post soon.)

A couple familiar names are also involved on this project. One is architecture firm Elenberg Fraser, whose work we’ve seen at Victoria One and Aurora Melbourne Central. The other is builder Multiplex, who I haven’t stopped talking about since seeing their work at Jewel Residences in Gold Coast, and also saw at London’s One Blackfriars.

Swanston Central will contain a whopping 1,039 one-, two-, and three-bedroom residences, and will include parking and retail space.