The Verge is a 3-stage, 150-apartment Retirement Living development located adjacent to the Burleigh Golf Club grounds. The long, narrow site traces the length of the 1st hole, and slopes steeply to the north-east. Our client, Retire Australia, aspires to create buildings that support the wellbeing and quality of life of their residents as they age. Their model offers a Wellness Centre containing community and health facilities. This centre is both inward-facing as the primary communal hub for the scheme, and outward-reaching as a point of interface with the wider community. The Verge also provides the first of Retire Australia’s new care hub model. This model acts as an alternative to aged care allowing ageing through all stages of life on site. The wellness centre is approached from the street through a welcoming landscaped garden. The building presents a single story to the street-front, containing a small café, hair and beauty salon, GP room, and administration spaces. A lower story containing gym and physiotherapy facilities is nestled into the slope below. The central corridor frames a view from the entry out to the residential buildings beyond, across a roof-top garden. The café is small and casual, to complement rather than detract from the offering of the nearby Golf Club restaurant. Complementing the central community hub, each residential building contains its own communal facilities on the roof-top and ground floor, linked to a series of external landscaped spaces. The residential buildings offer a range of apartment types. Apartments are afforded either golf course aspect or views to the coastal skyline. The long, rectangular form of the three buildings is heavily articulated with recesses and balconies to reduce bulk and scale. Texture and detail are achieved via a simple palette of materials including cement render, metal cladding, metal screening, and clear or coloured glass. The fair-way facing apartments are protected from golf-ball impact by a specialist netting system. Detailed research informed the selection of a black netting which is almost invisible when viewed from a distance, and hence does not impede residents’ views. As many of the residents are members of the Golf Club, the scheme also incorporates a golf-buggy transport network, with buggy parking and a series of paved buggy routes from the residential buildings to the fairway access points.