UPDATE: This article has been corrected to acknowledge Davenport Campbell as the joint venture Interior Designers with Woods Bagot for the office fitout for Buildings 1 & 2 and Aspect Studios as the landscape architects and public realm designers. Architecture & Design apologies for the oversight

Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp, Sissons, Woods Bagot & Davenport Campbell and COAP architects will all make design contributions to the massive urban regeneration of the Australian Technology Park (ATP) in Sydney.

Mirvac Projects was announced by UrbanGrowth NSW as the successful party in securing ownership and redevelopment rights for the ATP precinct and has since called on FJMT and Sissons to design three new buildings for the 13.2 hectare site, located in Eveleigh, Sydney.

FJMT and Sissons will transform three parking lots within the ATP precinct into state-of-the-art commercial buildings of varying heights, adding circa 107,400sqm of employment space to the precinct which will be home to an extra 10,000 workers by 2020.

The proposed ATP site is located approximately 4 kilometres south of the Sydney’s Central Business District in the suburb of Eveleigh and bounded by the inner suburbs of Darlington, Redfern, Alexandria, Erskineville and Newtown and in close proximity to the University of Sydney and UTS. Image: Aspect Studios.

Building 1 and Building 2 will be a new headquarters for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia whose commitment to the precinct as the anchor tenant is in the form of one of the largest commercial leasing pre-commitments in Australian history, occupying circa 95,000 square metres of commercial, retail, community and childcare NLA.

They will be nine and seven storeys in height and be situated diagonally opposite each other, wrapping around 12-storey commercial building occupied by Channel Seven and across a skinny street from the heritage-listed Locomotive Workshops.

Wedged between the buildings on a smaller plot of land will be Building 3, a four-storey timber framed civic building which incorporates a ground level cafe, childcare facility, gymnasium and community space, and is designed to be carbon positive.

Top to bottom: Buildings 1, 2 and 3. Images: FJMT

Externally, the buildings respond to the urban fabric of their surrounds but also quite heavily to the sustainability aspirations of the project. Building’s 1 and 2 are targeting a Min Green Star Design and As Built v1.1 rating of 6 stars as well as a 5 star NABERS energy rating. As such their façade materials are high performance and designed to optimise thermal comfort, energy and visual light transmission performance.

The material palette of both buildings includes double glazing with localised frit/interlayer treatment, ribbed metal spandrel panels, aluminium battens and louvres for sun shading, expressed bronzed aluminium window frames and aluminium cladding. The northern elevations of the buildings, which face the major public plaza (designed by Aspect Studios) and Locomotive Workshops, are especially designed to create an emblematic soft and distinctive backdrop to the tree canopies and public spaces within Locomotive Place

Each building also has a distinct external architectural feature; Building 1 with sweeping, sinuous forms of the southern façade and Building 2 with its irregular curved roof element wrapped in a standing seam steel profile.

Unique elements: Building 1's curving southern facade and Building 2's wavy roof. Images: FJMT

Internally they are also quite different. Building 1 is planned around a pair of workplace accommodation wings which run in the east / west direction and along a linear atrium space. One plate is curved while the other is regular and both will be joined by bridge elements and platforms situated at different levels along the full length of the building.

Floor plate layout of Building 1 (left) and Building 2 (right). Image: FJMT

Building 2 will be divided into three long parallel fingers of office accommodation which have been arranged in an east west direction across the site and all run towards a full height atrium space at the centre of the building. These plates are separated with top lit light slots to provide natural light and spatially rich void spaces in between the different work zone.

Both buildings have office fitout plans by Woods Bagot & Davenport Campbell joint venture.

The final and so far forgotten building on the site is Building 3 which will be a four-storey dedicated Community Facility at the heart of the ATP development.

It is located at the central junction and highly exposed corner between Buildings 1 and 2 and is axially aligned from north to south, exposing the long western elevation to afternoon solar loads, especially during the summer. FJMT and Sisson addressed the solar load challenges by designing a “box within a box” that blocks as much heat penetration as possible whilst maintaining an acceptable degree of light penetration and views out into the public domain.

It will be feature a simple glass clad plate protected by an additional secondary external skin of tubular aluminium louvres and separated by a 700mm deep air gap. The architects say this system allows the louvres to absorb and reflect the solar loads, keeping long wave radiation away from the glass withinand will also encourage natural airflow to remove the heat differential, keeping it well away from the internal occupied spaces.

The four storey building will be divided into a ground plane with retail units, including restaurants and cafes, and a gymnasium, a purpose built child care centre for 90 children on Level 1 and office spaces on Level 2 and 3.

The Childcare and Gym Fitout Drawings have been submitted by CO-AP.

Images: FJMT/NSW Planning

Nathan Johnson

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