URBAN CHARACTER Case Study: Beacon Cove
“Beacon Cove, although its not constructed that way, could be seen to have certain elements of a gated community …there’s limited access points…”
Beacon Cove is a recently completed inner-city housing development on a former industrial waterfront site near Port Melbourne. The urban 'character' was conceived as deriving from its 1920’s ‘garden city’ context and constructed using a limited series of housing types with many variations to enclose a series of small ‘greens’. While disparaged by outsiders for its 'legoland' aesthetic, enforced with colour codes and design covenants, this architectural consistency with its inward looking 'model community' ethos draws a largely satisfied market of urban professionals, ‘empty nesters’ and young families. Beacon Cove was designed with a pre-conceived and market-led image targeted at a narrow middle-suburban demographic and it can be seen as a place where character and identity are manufactured, a socially engineered happiness linked to the ideals of the 'cove' and the 'village green'. Yet the closure is not complete as an older street is 'swallowed' and class tensions emerge with public housing on its borders. And it is not inhabited primarily by residents wishing to retreat from the larger context, but those who seek to engage with it.