A 200 metre glass-faced lift shaft has been designed into Brisbane’s 111 Eagle Street development, engineers saying it’s the first time in the world such a lift shaft has been integrated into an external façade.

The Eagle Street project, designed and constructed by Cox Rayner architects and Leighton Contractors, and developed by The GPT Group, is expected to deliver 54 levels of office space at the riverside address.

To optimise the river views and work space, the building was designed with glass-faced lift shaft.

The Floth Physics Team was engaged by Leighton Contractors to develop a solution to ventilate and condition the lift shaft to combat excess heat produced by the lift itself and other environmental factors.

Research and development manager Guillaume Jolly said the team needed to account for the lift car movement in the lift shaft and the impact of the afternoon sun on the development’s western façade.

"We have used a facade modeling strategy that we have developed over the past three years with the help of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California,” Jolly said.

“Finding a cost effective solution to ventilate the lift shaft in a way that was going to meet the project environmental standards was the biggest challenge we faced throughout the project.”

“This is the first time in the world such a lift shaft has been uniquely integrated into the external façade.”

Floth Sustainable Building Consultants was appointed to provide the air conditioning system concept design, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) energy and thermal modelling for the air distribution systems for the 111 Eagle Street development

The team includes Guillaume Jolly, Dr Julien De Charentenay and Brenton King.