Fitzroy
Street

Hotel / St Kilda, Victoria
Design Management, Vettex

Status: Complete

A hotel on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, combining a new building with the refurbishment of the existing hotel, now complete.

Chris was brought in to drive the design through early contractor involvement: coordinating the consultant team, settling the buildability questions before they reached site, and carrying the documentation through into construction.

The hotel at 35 Fitzroy Street was the Saint Kilda Beach Hotel and reopens as the Novotel St Kilda, operated by Accor: 80 rooms around a garden atrium, the Urban Kitchen & Bar, co-working space, function rooms for up to 140 people and a rooftop event space for 150. VERSA designed the interiors, and when the hotel closed for the works its old furniture went to Sacred Heart Mission. The work pairs new construction, up to the rooftop terrace, with the refurbishment of the existing hotel and its ground floor.

Early contractor involvement brings the builder in while the design is still being finished, so the price and the program are set against a design the builder has helped shape. That only works if the design keeps to a timetable: the consultants coordinated, decisions made on time, and buildability questions answered on paper rather than on site.

A refurbishment adds its own questions. New work has to meet the existing building at every floor, services have to be routed through an existing structure, and the new spaces have to read as one hotel with the rooms they join. Chris also brought in Finding Infinity for the sustainability and energy compliance work, and worked through the rooftop terrace, the entry canopy and the building services with the design team.

On a hotel, design decisions repeat in every room. A small change to a bathroom, a services riser or a ceiling detail, multiplied eighty times, is either a saving or a cost many times over, which is why those decisions are settled in the drawings before the trades start. The early contractor involvement agreement was signed in May 2025, and the design management carried on from there into construction.

The completed Novotel St Kilda on Fitzroy Street: a white facade with red window awnings over the glazed ground floor.

Novotel St Kilda. The entry doors between the dining room and the lobby.

Novotel St Kilda. The reception desk in the long, top-lit lobby.

Novotel St Kilda. The garden atrium lounge, planted with palms, with banquette seating.

Novotel St Kilda. The sunken lounge beside the atrium, with the bar behind it.

Novotel St Kilda. The bar counter and stools under the timber ceiling.

Novotel St Kilda. The bar and dining room on the tiled floor.

Novotel St Kilda. The meeting room, with a long table and red joinery.

Novotel St Kilda. The function room, with its chequered floor and coffered ceiling.

Photographs courtesy of Erdi Group

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