Building design & drafting in Box Hill.

What's built here

Two Box Hills, really. A historic commercial core along Whitehorse Road with Victorian, Edwardian and interwar buildings running from Italianate through Art Nouveau to Moderne — and, since around 2015, a genuine high-rise city. Whitehorse Towers at roughly 115 metres, the 36-storey Sky One at 122 metres, and a $450m twin-tower project under way. Box Hill now carries the tallest buildings anywhere outside central Melbourne.

The planning context

Box Hill has been a designated centre since the 1954 Metropolitan Planning Scheme and is now a Metropolitan Activity Centre — plus a Suburban Rail Loop precinct, with the final station of SRL East under construction here. That is a level of growth pressure no other suburb on this list carries.

Controls that actually apply in Box Hill

• Parking Overlay Schedule 1 — Applies specifically to the Box Hill Metropolitan Activity Centre via Amendment C158, effective December 2015, implementing the Box Hill Central Activities Area Car Parking Strategy. It sets bespoke rates — residential visitor parking lifted from 0.1 to 0.2 spaces per dwelling for the first five dwellings, capped at five. Almost no other Melbourne suburb has its own parking overlay.
• Heritage Overlay HO244 — The Box Hill Commercial Precinct — significant for its mix of Italianate, Art Nouveau, English Domestic Revival and Moderne commercial buildings.
• Heritage Overlay HO242 — The Alexander Street Precinct.

Check what sits over your own title in two minutes, free: search your address on the Victorian Government's planning property report. Send it to us and we can usually tell you whether a permit is likely from one conversation.

What we typically do in Box Hill

High-rise residential and mixed use within the activity centre; car parking reduction applications under the Parking Overlay; heritage permit work in the commercial and Alexander Street precincts; medium-density townhouses in the surrounding streets.

Whatever the type, the documentation is the same discipline: architectural drafting drawn to be built, town planning drawings council can assess first time, and working drawings a builder can price without padding.

Planning controls change — amendments are gazetted regularly. Everything above was accurate at the time of writing, but confirm current controls for your specific address before relying on them.

Talk to us about your Box Hill project

Send us the address and the planning property report and we will tell you what applies — before you commit to anything. Get in touch, or see everywhere else we work.