Kingsford Terrace ‘Duporth’ is the first building of a seven-stage retirement development located at Corinda, planned to house a community of over 300 residents. Focussing on integrated landscape areas and pedestrian permeability, the masterplan positions a series of buildings around a central community courtyard. This first building contains 54 apartments, 18 care studios and extensive ground floor community facilities to serve the full development, including café, crafts, billiards, library, gymnasium, heated pool and function room. It was important to our client, Aura Holdings, that the building imbue a sense of homeliness and care, and that the ground floor community facilities feel warm and welcoming to inhabitants of the whole site. The design achieves this through careful attention to materials and detailing, and strong connections between internal and external landscaped communal spaces. The building is simple in form, and is bookended with large, curved brick screens to the main address. These features are at once a privacy screen, light filter and crafted emblem for the building. The brick, which is repeated in the internal communal spaces, creates a feeling of permanence, stability, warmth and homeliness, and adds a human dimension the building by bringing down the scale to a tactile level. The hand-crafted nature of the brick elements implies a sense of care for the building, and its inhabitants. The ground floor provides a gathering space that mediates the scale of a central hub with the intimacy of a lounge room. A curved, patterned brick wall greets residents and guests as they enter the building. A long view is created from this entry, down the main circulation spine, to a significant mature tree at the other end of the building, framed by full-height glazing.  The ground level community spaces open to allow maximum connection to the external spaces and courtyards beyond. The grounds are extensively landscaped with casual meeting points and gathering places for residents distributed throughout. The apartment and common areas are positioned to take advantage of the northern and eastern aspects where possible and provide views to the city and landscaped areas. The apartments vary in size and affordability. All are spacious, incorporating Gold Liveable Housing Design Guideline principles to allow residents to age in place.