Central Place

The design encapsulates the chaos and dynamism of downtown Sydney in built form, with plane geometry responding to the intersecting grids of George Street, Lee Street and Broadway. This approach is reflected in the key parts of the built form: the arrival experience, podium campus, tower campus, multiple entries, market hall and the façade design.

The tower is made up from a series of rotated blocks aligned to Sydney’s intersecting street grid. The inward focus of the forms emphasises the interior as meeting or social spaces for employees. Outwardly, the stepped form reduces bulk and provides additional corners for dual aspect. Appearing like a collection of totems, the building consists of a group of radiant terracotta towers and textured brick podiums that are iconic and informal, dynamic and respectful. The deeper, more articulated façades at the base offer protection from the sun and marry with the adjacent masonry-based buildings of Railway Square.

Borne of the tech industry’s demands for rapid expansion and need for flexibility is a new workplace typology: the ‘campus tower’ where all floors are designed to connect tenants horizontally and vertically. This translates into back-to-back towers that are joined to allow tenants to have contiguous interconnected 4000m2 floors.

The podium floors of 6000m2 campus floor plates are vertically connected by a central atrium. Broken into six volumes, the podium is porous with connection to the streets and tunnels below. The design combines simple rectangular workplace zones with characterful collaboration and social spaces, creating a village on every floor. The podium also houses extensive ground floor and basement retail areas and a sequence of dramatic voids and atriums.

A “fabric first” environmental design approach to the façade ensures great daylight, comfort, and solar control for the occupants. Glazed terracotta and red brick, materials common to the surrounding context, are introduced as façade claddings in an array of colours.

Opening to the north, the tower and podium create a grand urban entrance activating Henry Deane Plaza, which has been radically simplified. The building’s design embraces this new public space, creating a highly engaged food and beverage precinct at the entrance to Central Station.