The old Willsmere lunatic asylum had lain vacant for many years before it was converted to 284 residential apartments with the addition of 100 new row houses. Older unsympathetic additions were demolished to reveal a grand Victorian building arranged around garden courts.

The institution is magnificently sited on a landmark hill to the East of the city of Melbourne. New housing of a sympathetic understated form was added and a significant proportion of the river front land was returned to the Yarra Bend Trust.