The intent of this boutique apartment building in South Yarra is to redefine the genre by taking inspiration from Le Corbusier’s 1954 chapel Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, for its combination of organic mass, distinctive form and diversity of space. The resulting Fawkner building has a sense of openness – the quality of an embrace – in its engagement with the streetscape.

The journey to the apartments is a sequential passage through a landscaped garden arbour to a double-height sculptural foyer of glass, stone and stucco.

Inside the apartments, the treatment of the walls echoes the external circular motif, as intersections are curved and softened.

This promises to be a notable building for the prestigious Melbourne suburb of South Yarra.

Photography: Gabriel Saunders