Awards / Media

Chicago, 1910. Industry is booming, vice is rife and an unidentified assassin known as “Shotgun Man” is terrorising Little Italy. It’s also the year that leading Sydney architect John Burcham Clamp visits the city to investigate the latest architectural trends and construction techniques.

What he learns on that trip he puts to use designing a Wrigley’s Chewing Gum factory for the inner-east suburb of Rosebery. The heritage listed building is once again in construction mode as developer Stable Properties transforms the site into 99 apartments.

Stable Group will incorporate a solar-powered internal electricity network designed to substantially reduce strata fees in its re-development of the old Wrigley Chewing Gum factory in Rosebery. ‘The Burcham’ will become an iconic mixed residential/retail complex.

Centrepiece of “The Burcham” – named after the original architectural firm that designed the Wrigleys building in 1918 – will be the retention by Stable of the heritage-listed structure to be extensively renovated and converted to 44 residential apartments. The project will also include two new apartment buildings (one 4 storeys, the other 5) either side of the original building taking the total number of apartments to 99, plus a ground floor retail/commercial unit.

Stable Group’s “The Burcham” residential and retail development is designed to meet the challenges of a market undergoing dramatic demographic , structural and cultural changes just south of the Sydney CBD.

The so-called “statistical area 2” (or SA2) that will include “The Burcham” extends from Waterloo in the north to Rosebery in the south, a part of inner-suburban Sydney once dominated by factories and commercial buildings. Re-development of “The Burcham” is typical of the transformation sweeping through the area. Formerly the Wrigley’s Chewing Gum factory for 50 years, the factory building is destined to be remodelled into 44 1 -, 2-, and 3-bedroom apartments with high-tech features including an internal power network powered by a large solar panel array, biometric access, electric car charger bays, advanced home automation controls and a rooftop cinema. The project will also include two new buildings, one of four storeys the other five, bringing the total number of apartments to be marketed to 99.

The word ‘sustainable’ has become a major buzzword of the last few years.

In everything from food production to fashion, media and advertising have truly made green the new black. Sadly, it’s a term that has been diluted so much by commercial overuse, it’s almost lost it’s meaning.

But every now and then a commercial concept hits the market that is so innovative, so progressive, and so genuinely sustainable; we once again understand what the word means. The Burcham development in Sydney’s Rosebery is one of these concepts.

Sustainable living is an approach that strives for as little impact on the planet as possible. So how on earth can a $110 million dollar apartment complex possibly commit to being environmentally friendly? By being clever. The Burcham Rosebery is leading the way in Australian residential developments with it’s world-class solar energy system, electric car charging garage, and host of other ‘green’ features that, in years to come, will be demanded as basic features for a home.