Building design & drafting in Mordialloc.

What's built here

Mordialloc grew slowly. Despite the line reaching Parkdale in 1924, population barely moved until after the war — so the bulk of the stock is 1950s to 70s brick veneer, with genuine Victorian and Edwardian villas surviving near the creek and the original township core, and a thinner interwar layer between. There is also a distinct pocket of newer medium density: over 400 dwellings built between 2001 and 2006 on the former Epsom training track.

The planning context

Mordialloc is an activity centre governed by Pride of the Bay, the Mordialloc Structure Plan adopted in 2004 — a twenty-year vision for the centre, the creek and the foreshore, now at the end of that horizon. A separate Urban Design Framework shapes built form around the removed level crossings at Mordialloc and Aspendale. Council's 2024 planning scheme review explicitly flags both the flood mapping and the heritage data as priorities for update.

Controls that actually apply in Mordialloc

• Heritage Overlay — Applies under a heritage study now more than twenty years old. A draft Kingston Heritage Review of Victorian and Federation period places — covering Mordialloc alongside Mentone and Parkdale — identified 33 properties across the three suburbs as the best remaining examples, each with a draft citation. Consultation closed in early 2026, so this is live.
• Land Subject to Inundation and Special Building overlays — Apply around Mordialloc Creek and its floodplain. Both were first applied in 2002 and have not been updated since — council says so itself.
• The double constraint — This is Mordialloc's defining problem. A heritage-graded dwelling in the flood zone near the creek has to be heritage-sympathetic and flood-responsive at once — elevated floor levels, basement restrictions, and a street presentation that cannot simply be lifted a metre. Those two requirements pull against each other, and reconciling them is a design problem you want solved on paper, early.

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 Mordialloc

Postwar brick veneer renovations, extensions and knockdown rebuilds; heritage-sensitive work near the creek and town centre where flood controls also bite; medium-density infill on consolidated lots near the activity centre.

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 Mordialloc 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.