For St Kilda’s iconic Sacred Heart Mission

$25 million across four stages

Sacred Heart Mission has been a fixture in gritty St Kilda for decades, and provides among other services aged care accommodation for residents who might otherwise be homeless, with nowhere to go. We were engaged by the Mission in 2014 to undertake a comprehensive masterplan of the 101 Grey Street Campus, and from this Project 101 emerged: a campus of care, encompassing aged care, rooming house assisted accommodation, Women’s House, Hands-on Health Clinic and various administrative support functions and meeting spaces.

As an aged care facility, the main part of which is pictured top right, the building concept is specific to urban St Kilda, and unique - we have turned the concept of aged care inside out, literally. This idea was inspired by the General Manager of aged care for the Mission, Margaret Thorpe, herself an inspiration: she knows her community, and knows that they are not shrinking violets.

This is a community of residents who have often come from the street, and it is the street where their roots are found. Most aged care is internal, looking inward: this facility engages directly with the busy Grey Street, with residents looking outwards through an east-facing wall of glass. The living spaces are filled with sunlight each morning, and provide a view outwards at all hours, an optimistic outlook for a proud and well-cared-for community or residents.