One Central Park in Sydney by Ateliers Jean Nouvel

On the 7th of November, Council on the Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) named the best tall building of the year. Beat 87 entries from all over the world, the winner was a mixed-use complex One Central Park in Sydney by a famous architectural practice Ateliers Jean Nouvel and local practice PTW Architects.

One Central Park is located on a former brewery site near the downtown. The maximum height of the complex is 116 meters; it includes a five storey common retail podium and two towers that rise above it. The higher tower houses 34 storeys of residential apartments, while the serviced apartments are in the lower 12-storey tower.

However, there are only facts. Actually, One Central Park is unique for its two distinguishing features. The first is the building’s fa?ades that, according to the architects, became an extension of adjacent urban park. So, about half of their surface (1,120 sqm) is covered with original vertical gardens. To design them, French botanist and artist Patrick Blanc was involved in the project. He used 35,200 plants of 383 different species, including some native Australian flowers and plants such as, for example, acacias. Besides the only aesthetic function, such fa?ade has also a practical use – plants appear to be a natural sunscreen that protects apartments from direct sun rays in summer and allows the maximum light in winter.

CTBUH regional winners 2014

One Central Park in Sydney by Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Best Tall Building
Americas:

Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building

One Central Park in Sydney by Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Best Tall Building
Asia & Australasia:

One Central Park

One Central Park in Sydney by Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Best Tall Building
Europe:

De Rotterdam

One Central Park in Sydney by Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Best Tall Building
Middle East & Africa:
Cayan Tower

The next feature of the design is a heliostat system which provides the overshadowed areas of the courtyard with sunlight. The system consists of two arrays of motorized mirrors. The first, located on the roof of 12-storey tower, captures sun rays and reflects it on the mirrors under a huge cantilever. Thereafter, these mirrors direct the rays down onto the surfaces of the courtyard. At nighttime, this second array also turns into a canvas for a bright installation Sea Mirror by a French lighting artist Yann Kersal?.

And there are some more words regarding the competition. Anthony Wood, the Executive Director of the CTBUH and one of the members of the jury, said: ‘Seeing this project for the first time stopped me dead. One Central Park strongly points the way forward, not only for an essential naturalisation of our built environment, but for a new aesthetic for our cities – an aesthetic entirely appropriate to the environmental challenges of our age.’

 

PROJECT DATA:

Location: Level 11, 488 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
Program: mixed use high-rise, residential and retail; two residential towers 116 m and 64.5 m high, 624 apartments, plus 16 000 sqm of retail space
Usable floor area: 65 000 m?
Gross floor area: 97 000 m?
Budget: 325.000.000 $AU
Client: Frasers Property Australia and Sekisui House Australia
Design architect: Ateliers Jean Nouvel
Local collaborating architect: PTW Architects (Peddle Thorp & Walker)
Main contractor: Watpac Construction (NSW) Pty Ltd
Cost consultant: Davis Langdon
Engineers:
Structure: Aedis (Schematic Design), Robert Bird Group (Construction)
Energy: Transsolar
MEP, Environment, Lighting: Arup
Fa?ades: Surface Design Pty Ltd
Green Walls: Patrick BLANC
Landscape: Jean-Claude HARDY
Landscape (horizontal planters, context): Aspect Oculus
Heliostat design: Kennovations
Heliostat programming: Device Logic
Lighting design Heliostat: Yann KERSALE
Photos: John Gollings, Simon Wood, Murray Fredericks

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