Rozelle Village is the redevelopment of the former Balmain Leagues Club, a landmark corner site at the intersection of Victoria Road, Darling Street and Waterloo Street in Sydney’s inner west. Designed by Studio.SC (formerly Scott Carver), the $135 million scheme presents a rare opportunity to transform a historically significant and long-derelict site into a vibrant, cultural and community-focused precinct.

The vision centres on a true mixed-use development: a new Tigers Leagues Club anchoring high-end residential apartments, retail, commercial and community spaces, all organised around a central public plaza connected to the surrounding streets via a network of laneways. Residences include terrace-style homes, studios, and one, two and three-bedroom penthouse apartments, offering sweeping harbour and city views. The design intent is a timeless, superbly crafted living environment that captures the essence of Sydney life, giving residents the chance to live above active public spaces while remaining deeply connected to the local Rozelle community.

Our team supported the project across multiple disciplines, helping translate this vision into a deliverable, high-performing development. This included building services design and coordination across the mixed-use podium and residential towers, with particular focus on the basement carpark – a critical piece of infrastructure given the site’s constrained urban footprint and the need to accommodate a 3-storey basement beneath the development. Our involvement spanned mechanical, ventilation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling, working closely with the design team to optimise performance, reduce capital and operational costs, and ensure compliance with relevant standards.

A key focus of our work was the mechanical ventilation strategy for the 3-storey basement carpark, where CFD modelling was used to test and validate two alternative approaches against the Deemed-to-Satisfy (DTS) benchmark:

• Option 1 (no jet fans): Reduced mechanical rates by 42% against DTS, delivering ductwork material and installation savings of approximately $400k.
• Option 2 (jet fan solution): Achieved a further improvement, reducing mechanical rates by 63% against DTS.

Both options allowed the exhaust plenum to be reduced by 15m, freeing up valuable basement space that could be redirected to parking capacity or other uses. Together, these outcomes demonstrate how targeted CFD analysis can materially reduce both capital cost and physical plant footprint on a constrained, high-density basement – without compromising ventilation performance or compliance.