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The Burcham’s new design embraces the site’s unique history, re-using the former 1918 Wrigley’s Gum Factory building as residential apartments, then adding two new four and five storey apartment buildings, comprising 99 apartments in total across the three buildings.

The interiors, also designed by Allen Jack+Cottier, blend the industrial heritage of the building with the late 20s early 30s character of its architecture, while making the most of the original features.

Technology with Stephen Fenech – Chris Smith Interview.

AUSTRALIA’S smartest and most hi-tech homes are not in Sydney’s exclusive harbourside suburbs of Vaucluse or Bellevue Hill. Nor are they in hip and happening Melbourne. They are instead inside a disused factory in the heart of Rosebery. The Burcham, built in the 1918 Wrigley’s factory on Crewe Place, features 98 units ranging from one to three-bedrooms. The apartments are being billed as the smartest in Australia if not the Southern Hemisphere.

It sounds like something from Back to the Future but a new apartment building in Sydney is set to become the country’s “smartest” home. Tech savvy house hunters now have the chance to buy into the brand new development, which features fingerprint scanners, numberplate recognition, voice control and its own electricity source.

The interplay between sustainability and smart-home technology looks like it’s starting to sell homes. At a tour of a smart-tech enabled and sustainability focused residential development, The Burcham, in Rosebery in Sydney’s inner city on Tuesday, Clipsal by Schneider Electric smart space director Ben Green said home buyers were starting to recognise the value of smart systems as a way to save both money and the planet.

From keyless entry to electric vehicle charging bays, home living is set to change forever as residential developers take advantage of new technologies to create the ultimate smart apartments.

A heritage listed former chewing gum factory that is being born again as a “sustainable” inner-city Sydney apartment complex will use solar PV and behind the meter technology to supply residents with power at a cost of up to one-fifth below the retail market.

The project, which is now under construction by Stable Group in Rosebery, is one among a rapidly growing number of new and retrofitted residential developments in Australia to include cheap, clean and locally generated energy as matter of course – in this case, from a 54kW solar array on the apartment building’s roof.

Stable Group is about to take its smart-living residential development The Burcham, set on the site of the original Wrigley Chewing Gum factory in Sydney’s inner south, to the next level, offering residents electricity 20 per cent cheaper than market rates.

Stable is building wiring and meters into the new buildings at 6-8 Crewe Place, Rosebery, to create an embedded network for the owners’ corporation called Burcham Energy. Just like an energy retailer, the owners’ corporation will own the licence to acquire energy from the wholesale market and on-sell it to tenants.

Thanks to a rapidly emerging design trend incorporating a plethora of advanced lifestyle technologies, the once humble unit or townhouse can now offer an experience that channels science fiction rather than urban norm.

Electric vehicle charging bays, biometric apartment access and smart meter technology are just an example of the innovations currently making their way into exciting new residential developments both here and abroad. Notable for their emphasis on enabling sustainable lifestyles, such inclusions allow residents to control living costs and reduce their carbon footprints. Then there’s the simple, inescapable fun of living in a responsive and interactive space.