Apartment Design Guidelines for Victoria

The Apartment Standards are intended to improve apartment design in Victoria. The design of apartment buildings that suitably responds to context and successfully incorporates the apartment standards and guidelines require specialist design capabilities. It is important for the success of the project to select a team of design professionals to be led by an experienced Architect or building designer who can analyse and integrate the multiple requirements into a successful design that contributes positively to the urban context and the neighbourhood character.

The Apartment Design Guidelines for Victoria are arranged in three sections. All three sections and their elements are interrelated and require an integrated approach to achieve the objectives.

The first section is about siting and building arrangement. This section reinforces the importance of urban context report and design response as a starting point for design. This involves assessing the immediate context, adjacent buildings and public realm.

Section 2 embraces building performance which provides guidance about performance issues which need to be considered in designing the building such as noise impacts, energy performance and management of water and waste. These issues require consideration at both a site scale and at a more detailed building systems level.

Lastly, section 3 emphasizes on dwelling amenity. This section introduces guidance related to the detailed design of individual dwellings. The guidelines address amenity issues such as access to daylight and ventilation through arrangements of windows and room depth as well as functional and accessible layouts of internal and external space.