Billbergia Group’s 50-storey mixed-use marvel taking shape at 88 Walker Street in North Sydney is an inspiring case study of optimised green design, respect for heritage and impressive wellness amenity.

 

 

When developer Billbergia purchased the compact site at 88 Walker Street in 2018, it did so with a vision for a slender tower that would take advantage of Sydney’s stunning views and provide some of the best workspace in the city.

88 Walker St. marks Billbergia’s first foray into North Sydney. But the family-owned development group has three decades of experience and a development pipeline of 10,000 apartments, 40,000 sqm of retail and commercial floor space, and 76,000 sqm of industrial and commercial space in Sydney and Brisbane.

The 179-metre-high building, designed by architect Fitzpatrick + Partners, will boast 23 levels of commercial office above 21 levels of hotel space. The 252-suite, four-star business hotel will be managed by the upscale Citadines.

The project is registered to achieve a Green Star – Design & As Built v1.2 rating from the Green Building Council of Australia, with engineering sustainability consultants at WSP overseeing the process.

After striking the deal for 88 Walker Street, Billbergia purchased the air space over the neighbouring Firehouse Hotel to maximise the development’s potential. The innovative design cantilevers over the hotel, built in 1895 as the North Sydney Fire Station, and incorporates the heritage-listed façade into its spectacular street presence.

This design decision dramatically increases the floorplates – which span up to 560 metres – while maximising access to light. One of the building’s most impressive features is its Skylink, which reimagines traditional fire escape stairs to provide natural light, connectivity and breath-taking views over Sydney Harbour.

Other site constraints have also been used to the project team’s advantage. An existing stormwater culvert, for instance, restricted the amount of basement space that could be accommodated in the new building. Rather than including onsite car parking, the design encourages active transport with generous end-of-trip facilities.

“We are proud that this project has risen through technical ingenuity and is destined to provide enviable and well-connected corporate homes to businesses far into the future,” says Billbergia Group’s managing director, John Kinsella AM.

The only way is up

More tall towers shot up last year than ever before. When it comes to building height, the only way is up, says Arup’s principal of buildings for Australasia, Dr Craig Gibbons.

Gibbons (pictured) recently achieved global recognition after the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) endowed him with a fellowship at its annual award ceremony in Chicago.

Back in Australia, Gibbons says we are facing the same challenges and opportunities as every other urbanising country around the world – and that means looking up.

“It’s no surprise to anyone that buildings are getting taller. But in cities around the world, height limits are being challenged as people deal with population growth and urbanisation,” he says.

High-rise construction is no longer confined to financial and business centres. Instead, it is becoming the accepted model for densification as more than a million people move to cities each week.

According to CTBUH, there are now more than 1,300 skyscrapers at 200 metres or taller around the world, with 144 of those completed in 2017 alone – double the number constructed just four years previously. Notably, 2017 was also the most geographically diverse year for tall towers, with 69 cities across 23 countries completing tall buildings.

These buildings are not only getting taller, but also thinner and greener, Gibbons observes.

“Developers are learning to make better use of smaller sites,” Gibbons says, pointing to New York’s “skinny towers” around Central Park “where the aim of the game is to get as high as possible to maximise the view”.

The biggest challenge with skinny buildings is not what’s above, but what is down below, Gibbons adds. Smaller basements require more efficient car parking, which is why automated car stacker systems are taking off.

Towers are becoming greener, too, Gibbons says – and that doesn’t just mean energy efficiency. Milan’s Bosco Verticale, One Central Park in Sydney and the Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore are just three examples of how buildings are bringing the jungle to the city. The Oasia Hotel took home the CTBUH award for the world’s best tall building in 2018.

 

How tall is tall?

While what constitutes a tall building is open to interpretation – a 15-storey building may not pass comment in Chicago but will certainly be a talking point in Canberra – but CTBUH defines a “tall” building as more than 200 metres. A “supertall”

building is greater than 300 metres, while a “megatall” structure is over 600 metres.

As of today, there are 132 supertall and only three megatall buildings – Makkah Royal Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia (601 metres), Shanghai Tower (632 metres) and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa (an eye-watering 828 metres).

Gibbons, who has worked with Arup for 25 years, was in Dubai while the Burj Khalifa was under construction and says it’s his favourite tall building. “To me, it epitomises great design because of the way the form has been sculpted to ‘confuse’ the wind.”

The role of the engineer is central to any tall tower project, he adds. “The architect may come up with the original vision, but as the tower gets taller, the engineer has a greater say on the overall form of the building.”

What does he think when he sees rendered images of the cloud-scraping one-kilometre-high Jeddah Tower for example?

“When I look at the challenges that need to be addressed, I have the utmost respect for anything over 300 metres.”

Gibbons has completed his fair share of buildings that surpass the 300-metre mark, including the Guangzhou International Finance Centre at 438 metres, and the 412-metre International Finance Centre in Hong Kong (pictured left) which, when commenced in 2000, was going to be the third-tallest building in the world. It now ranks number 30, which illustrates the ‘rise of the high rise’ over a relatively short period of time.

A career highlight was his work on the CCTV building in Beijing, known locally as Dà KùchÇŽ or ‘big pants’ (pictured right) – a feat of engineering that creates a three-dimensional cranked loop. “It redefined tall, but anyone can look at it and appreciate what makes it stand up thanks to the expressed braced structure,” Gibbons explains.

Closer to home, he admires the engineering on Sydney’s 8 Chifley Square, from the big floorplates to the bracing along the building’s façade which ties it up like a red ribbon. “I like that the building expresses itself.  Even a lay person can appreciate why it’s there.”

 

Going up Down Under

It’s interesting to note that, of the 100 tallest buildings in the world, just one is in Australia: Q1 on the Gold Coast, which stretches to 322.5 metres.

Gibbons says Australians must “face the inevitability” that our buildings will get taller – but there are many opportunities for us to build cities with character at height.

“Australia is a world leader in construction and is doing reinforced concrete buildings very well. We are very good at precast and prestressing, and the world can learn from us.”

But we can also learn from other parts of the world, notably East Asia “where there are many examples of mixed use towers.”

Gibbons says Australia is in a solid position with a strong manufacturing industry, ability to prefabricate and good quality construction. “We can leverage this,” he says, by experimenting with new materials, such as engineered timber.

Embracing a “happy hybrid” can “make the best use of existing mature construction industries and skills we already have, and supplement this with new materials and skills”.

“But be bold. We can learn from the forms and types of tall buildings being done elsewhere in the world that adapt to the ways people want to work and live.”

Now, that’s something to look up to.