Location: Sydney, Australia.

Architect: fjmt.

The proposed development is a 32-storey mixed-use building that includes repurposing existing vehicular access and basement levels for shared car parking and services, conservation, refurbishment and fit out of the existing 10-storey heritage building for retail and commercial office uses, and construction of a 22-storey tower above the heritage item, comprising communal facilities and building plant at podium level and 101 residential apartments. The ground and first floor level frontages will be altered and added to facilitate greater activation and an improved pedestrian experience at the ground plane. The architecture is timeless and based on five key conceptual principles: Integration and Dialectic, Suspension, Identity, Heritage, and Materiality. The new architecture is conceived as a suspended object, floating in space as a light, suspended curvilinear object that both contrasts and compliments the heritage form below. The new suspended form, in dialect with the heritage, will give a strength and unity of specific urban identity to the multiple uses of shopping, workplace and residence. The tower geometry has been developed to create a form that is sympathetic to the curvilinear character of the heritage facade. The scale and massing of the tower has been carefully formed to not only respond to the detailed briefing requirements but also to create a tower form that responds to and reinforces the importance of the heritage building below. The tower is positioned above the new centrally located void within the heritage building. The tower form is on a north/south axis with the long elevations facing east and west. The dominant elevation facing east, creates a strong visual connection to Hyde Park and beyond to Sydney Harbour. The west elevation has views down Market Street and toward Darling Harbour. Three key Heritage considerations have been carefully analysed to determine a design outcome that is generated from this analysis and is sympathetic but creates a new interpretation.

Photo credit: Virtual Ideas