Six months after winning the Renewal SA contest for one of Bowden’s last development sites, Otello has taken Flowe Bowden to market, putting 115 apartments above a two-storey wellness club in a 10-storey tower that makes its exposed cross-laminated timber the health plan itself. That is according to Daniel Harris, founder of the Adelaide developer, who confirmed the launch on Tuesday, with private appointments now running from a display gallery at 45 Gibson Street, on the same street as the site.
“Flowe brings together my two biggest passions, creating places and creating healthier lives,” Harris said, claiming the developer set out to build something Adelaide has not seen, a genuinely healthy building that improves daily life without effort.
Splitting the building into two wings, Melbourne practice Fieldwork has joined them with an open-air breezeway in place of enclosed corridors, its walkways built for daylight, moving air, and chance meetings between neighbours. Timber does the visible work, with a podium picking up Bowden’s brick-and-sandstone past before the structure shifts to exposed CLT through the apartments and shared spaces above.
“Rather than treating wellness as something that only happens on the ground floor,” Fieldwork Director Quino Holland said, with the response running the idea through the whole building, the tallest timber project the practice has designed.
Inside the homes, blackbutt engineered timber floors sit beneath exposed CLT ceilings and warm timber joinery, with low-VOC finishes chosen for cleaner indoor air in a fully electric, gas-free building carrying rooftop solar and a targeted 5 Star Green Star rating.
A more familiar wellness offer anchors the lower levels, with Level Eleven spreading a gym, yoga and reformer Pilates studios, Finnish and infrared saunas, magnesium hot and cold plunge pools, and recovery spaces across the ground floor, mezzanine, and first floor. Unlike most resident-only clubs, Level Eleven will open its doors to the wider Bowden community as a paying venue, with residents keeping member benefits.
It comes as Otello revealed in June that the Bowden club would be the third in a Level Eleven chain built with V2FIT co-founder Dan Peters. A 2,500 square metre Tonsley flagship and a 1,100 square metre Kent Town club open this spring, with founding memberships for Bowden released late this month.
Street life gets the same care, with a cafe facing Bowden Village Reserve, a bike workshop with tool storage, co-working space, and a dog wash pulling daily routines into the building’s public edge.
Delivery now rests with builder Jaytex Construction, named on the launch materials, which also credit Collectivus for the wellness interiors, Hip V. Hype for sustainability, and landscape architects TCL.
The launch follows Renewal SA’s January decision to pick Otello ahead of rival bids for one of the last remaining sites in the precinct, an $80 million commitment carrying 20 per cent affordable housing through HomeSeeker SA, above the 15 per cent planning rule, plus 16 specialist disability apartments.
Beyond Gibson Street, Adelaide keeps adding timber, from Australia’s largest timber beams by weight and volume at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre to a precinct Renewal SA expects to pass 5,300 residents by 2035 once Bowden and the nearby Brompton Gasworks are complete. Fieldwork’s design now stands between that forecast and a display gallery selling 115 apartments from Thursday to Sunday each week.
