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Heritage Design Guide

The Heritage Design Guide assists architects, developers and property owners to better use and understand our heritage policies when adapting or developing heritage properties.

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Introduction

The Heritage Design Guide has been prepared by the City of Melbourne to support interpretation of the heritage policies within the Melbourne Planning Scheme. The heritage policies are as follows:

The guide uses illustrations and photos as examples to visually communicate the intent of the heritage policies. The photo captions and illustration annotations specifically outline the policy requirements achieved or not achieved in each example.

This guide applies to all places within the heritage overlay within the City of Melbourne (except the Docklands Zone); however, the sections of this guide titled 'outside of the CCZ' only apply outside of both the Capital City Zone (CCZ) and the Docklands Zone (DZ). (See map of the City of Melbourne boundary and zones.)

​The Heritage Design Guide must be read in conjunction with the Melbourne Planning Scheme and to the extent of any inconsistency, the Melbourne Planning Scheme prevails. The Heritage Design Guide is a resource to assist relevant land owners and provide information generally and does not constitute legal advice. The Heritage Design Guide and in particular the diagrams and photographs contained within it are for illustrative purposes only noting that assessing and responding to heritage controls will depend on the individual site context and all the circumstances.

Image credits

Where the author of the image is not specified, these images are taken by or owned by the City of Melbourne. All illustrations have been prepared by the City of Melbourne.

Download the full guide

our acknowledgement

  • Torres Strait Islander Flag
  • Aboriginal People Flag

The City of Melbourne respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land we govern, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin and pays respect to their Elders past and present. 

 

We acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.

We accept the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and are committed to walking together to build a better future.