Doma Group's conservation plan approved for Canberra Brickworks Precinct in Yarralumla

Heritage consultants GML Heritage worked alongside the council over 18 months to develop the plans, which provide management and conservation policies for the Brickworks site and its railway remnants for the next five years.

Doma Group signed a contract with the ACT government in 2019 to redevelop the 16.1-hectare heritage site, which will include up to 380 residential dwellings, including houses, terraces and apartments.

Doma senior development manager Alex Moulis said the plan's approval was a milestone for the redevelopment as it would inform future design of the area.

"That will then allow us to make changes to the buildings that are in line with the conservation of the precinct as a whole, so it is an important step," he said.

As part of the proposed designs, the existing industrial buildings will be redesigned as an office, dining and wellness precinct, while other heritage structures will be left as relics to represent the site's history.

Residents and community groups have been closely following the redevelopment for several years.

In 2015, original plans for up to 1800 dwellings on the site were reduced to a maximum of 380, while the Conservation Council ACT Region recently called for gas to be excluded from all new buildings.

Established in 1913, the Canberra Brickworks was the ACT's first industrial manufacturing facility and continues to play a significant role in the territory's history, according to ACT Heritage Council chair Ken Heffernan.

"The Brickworks was right there at the very start of Canberra as the nation's capital, and part of its significance is that it really has contributed to a whole lot of other parts of the territory that are of great significance," he said.

"The bricks that you see in the powerhouse down at Kingston Foreshore and bricks in the Reid housing precinct, throughout Canberra, these bricks and the labour of those early workers in Canberra, basically gave us a heck of a lot of our heritage fabric."

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Interestingly, the red "Canberra Commonwealth"-stamped bricks that have become synonymous with Yarralumla Brickworks weren't the first to be made.

"Those bricks that are around Canberra weren't actually the very first because they actually built temporary kilns in order to make the bricks to make the Brickworks," Mr Heffernan said.

Remnants of these very early kilns, which produced bricks with a "plain, indented triangular" stamp, were found as part of the archaeological research for the conservation plan.

Doma plans to incorporate bricks throughout the redevelopment, in both the existing and new buildings.

"It's important to respect the heritage of the Brickworks core but it's also good to tell the story of what how bricks are used today and how brick construction has advanced," said Mr Moulis.

Mr Heffernan said he was pleased almost everything on the site would be conserved and maintained as part of the new precinct.

"This conservation plan will provide a great guide to enable the adaptive reuse [of the site], so that people across Canberra and visitors can enjoy this place on their doorstep - one of the very few really substantial, industrial heritage sites in the territory," he said.

Doma is now preparing final development applications for the site, which will be presented to the public before being submitted to the Planning Authority for assessment.

The group expects to receive development approval by mid-2022, with the first stage of construction to follow soon after.

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