BLP’s mixed use development Casba has been recognised in the first annual American Architecture Prize (AAP) Awards. The AAP Award celebrates creativity and innovation architecture, landscape architecture and interior design, and was created to advance the appreciation of global architectural design.
Completed in joint venture with SJB Architects, Casba received an honourable mention in the Mixed Use Category at the awards held in New York earlier this month. Casba has already garnered notable award-winning success having won major prizes from the NSW chapter of Australian Institute of Architects and the Urban Density Institute of Australia, and the World Architecture Festival, alongside multiple nominations.
Comprising 65 residential dwellings and 3,000 sqm of retail space, Casba was conceived around three guiding elements: a communal, publically accessible courtyard, pedestrian links throughout the site, and active street edges. Occupying a significant land parcel, the project needed to balance public good, in the form of through site links and retail amenity, with private requirements around apartment living, privacy and appropriate levels of ground level activation. As a showcase for renewed possibilities for urban living, Casba makes a bold yet not grandiose statement involving the surrounding environment without losing the individual presence of the building.
David Leece, Director at BLP said of the project’s recognition: “We’re delighted to see Casba continuing to be recognised as a leading example in the mixed-use sector world wide.”
