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<h3>Indi Sydney is a build-to-rent tower located over the southern Gadigal Metro Station entry.</h3>

It interprets its heritage context using contemporary masonry materials; while prioritising liveability and amenity over architectural form.
The small ‘L’ shaped site wraps around the historic Edinburgh Castle Hotel, creating a challenging configuration for a residential building. The entry to Gadigal Metro Station occupies a large portion of the site, leaving a limited footprint for the building core and minimal street frontage for entry and activation.
The Bathurst Street podium steps down to transition between the Edinburgh Castle Hotel and the adjoining building, while integrating the tower into the composition. A large opening on Bathurst Street scaled to the height of the historic Hotel announces the Metro entry.

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The tower is expressed as four slender vertical volumes, each with a different masonry hue. The four volumes form a stepped profile on the skyline as they adjust to the solar access plane. A horizontal slab edge every three storeys references the scale of the surrounding heritage buildings and orders the stepping of the tower volumes. A vertical slot in the tower introduces light and ventilation to the lift lobby and communal corridors.
Three storey masonry verticals use depth to express solidity while providing shading and privacy to residents. Each room has a specific window type to respond to internal amenity and privacy. Fine-scale steel detailing for balustrades and horizontal shades counterpoints the masonry’s prominence.

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The 6-storey podium largely contains mechanical plant for the Metro Station. Above that the tower consists of 30 levels of build-to-rent apartments, stacked between amenity floors at the top and bottom. The podium incorporates a co-working space and resident’s lounge/kitchen on level 2 and a wellness floor on level 6 with a pool located between a series of inverse ‘V’ shaped transfer structures over the Metro entry. The stepped top of the tower has a large outdoor terrace adjoining an indoor lounge and dining area.
Typical residential floors have 8 or 9 apartments per floor, with six naturally ventilated corner apartments created via the offset volumes. Expressed off-form concrete provides an authentic expression of the jump-form core construction while minimising unnecessary linings. Louvres and custom ventilation flaps on the southern façade provide privacy to the adjoining apartments.

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Indi Sydney

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<h3>Constitution Place is a city transformation project inspired by the Griffins’ City Beautiful vision for Canberra.</h3>

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Now a vibrant urban precinct, Constitution Place consists of a pair of buildings in dialogue, the ACT Government headquarters and a mixed-use office and premium hotel building, both a framed by a network of fine grain public spaces. 
Circular and triangular geometries inscribe urban spaces and built forms unique to Canberra and utilise enduring materials to create a lasting legacy in the heart of Civic.
A network of fine grain public spaces defines the precinct’s urban design and weaves together different scales, from the civic-scaled Legislative Plaza, to an intimate Pocket Square and a dining laneway connecting Constitution Avenue to the Canberra Theatre.
Legislative Plaza tapers inward, drawing people in to a tree-shaded grassed area, a civic colonnade and a café. A pocket square on the corner of Constitution Avenue and London Circuit juxtaposes Legislative Plaza as an intimate gathering space. Theatre Lane connects these two spaces and provides pedestrian permeability through the site. It is fronted with cafes, restaurants and bars and has become Civic’s new ‘eat street,’ attracting lunchtime workers as well as the evening theatre crowd.

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The ACT Government building references the civic buildings of the Parliamentary Triangle through its off-white precast façades, which contrasts with the mixed-use building’s grid of fine black steel fins. The building is designed to ensure the heart of municipal government claims a presence on Constitution Avenue.
Its large floorplates are expressed as three volumes; each with differing façade strategies that respond to their context and solar orientation. The government building’s irregular three-sided plan with services core in each corner results in regular shaped workspaces that maximise wellbeing and sustainability.
The workspaces are arranged around a central atrium composed of three circles linked by concave arcs to form a curvaceous void that sinuously connects the building’s workspaces to a central social heart. The ground floor is publicly accessible, promoting the transparency and openness of government, and is visually connecting to the workplace via the atrium.

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The commercial and hotel building claims the corner of Constitution Avenue and London Circuit; this is a new typology for Canberra and frames a dramatic entry to Theatre Lane. A grid of black fine steel fins provide shading, contrasting the white masonry of the Government Building. The fin density changes vertically to reference internal functions and articulate the buildings as two stacked volumes to reduce its scale.
The 132-room A by Adina Hotel offers guests spacious apartment living with personalised services and facilities. The triangular floorplate maximises natural daylight and outlook for guests, while the materiality has remained raw and honest, with tonal elements of eucalyptus green subtly referenced throughout.

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Constitution Place

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<h3>Circular Quay is a site that holds deep cultural significance for many Australian people, but it is overwhelmed by infrastructure.</h3>
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Our big-picture thinking presents an opportunity to transform Circular Quay into a grand urban room where the city meets the harbour.
A new square at the foot of Customs House is created by removing the Cahill Expressway, rerouting the City Circle rail infrastructure to under Bridge Street and relocating a ferry wharf. The foreshore around Circular Quay’s wharves, which is currently narrow and dense, can be transformed into a generous public realm connecting to the new light rail up George Street.
This move reconnects public space to our maritime landscape, people to Country and Sydney to the world. If realised, the new waterside square – suitable for local, national and international celebration – will boost Sydney’s reputation as a key global destination.

Circular Quay

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<h3>Our transformative project at Town Hall Square reimagines the site as Sydney’s new living room, where green avenues, civic and cultural places converge.</h3>
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The new square is a calm, generous and flexible space that gives focus to the architectural exuberance of the historic Town Hall building through alignment, symmetry and scale. Park Street’s green canopy shades the northern edge of the square, while a contemporary, ‘verandah’ building offers places for events and activities to the south. A public market hall under the square links people to trains, buses and trams that are located around the square’s edges.
Town Hall Square will become Sydney’s civic heart, a place for all people to gather, pause, participate, or protest. It will provide more space for public life in the heart of Sydney and help to connect the city’s assets from the Innovation Hub at Central down to the harbour at Circular Quay.

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<h3>Our aim was to give Brindabella a social heart as an archetype for humanising and urbanising business parks.</h3>
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Brindabella Business Park, typical of many suburban business parks, has a series of object buildings within bucolic landscaped grounds; however it has always lacked a central gathering space for the community. We sought to create a social heart, and demonstrate a case for humanising and urbanising business parks.
The site was an at grade carpark opposite a large grass playing field in the centre of Brindabella Business Park, between the park’s perimeter loop road and its primary internal pedestrian spine. Our client sought two highly flexible commercial office buildings suitable for both government and private tenants, and for single or multiple occupiers. This ‘ultra’ flexibility was a recipe for the generic building typology typical of business parks.
We extended the alignment of the park’s main vehicle entry, which bisects the site diagonally, to create a laneway through the site. This connects the loop road to the pedestrian spine and also provides an entry address for the buildings. To engage the playing field and pedestrian spine we created a triangular public space that is open and welcoming to passers-by. The resultant building forms integrate the playing field, park entry, loop road and pedestrian spine into a new pedestrian oriented urban ensemble.
The resulting complex geometric forms utilise a side-core and central atrium to create rectilinear plates separated by an interconnecting stair. The floorplate elements are individually expressed, articulating the buildings as a series of discrete forms separated by natural ventilation slots.

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Inside, soft-cornered triangular atriums are lined with timber and animated with glass lifts. A light-reflecting ‘blob’ and perimeter skylight provide diffuse daylight through the interior, while reducing heat load and concealing return air and smoke exhaust systems. A series of intersecting circular elements at the base of the atrium creates a third space to sit, work or meet.
A civic scaled verandah with a floating canopy, supported by six-storey ‘super-thin’ steel columns, frames the playing field. This space creates a sympathetic scale to the playing field, while providing weather protection to the social heart. The canopy ‘floats’ off the buildings with an open perimeter strip. Retail tenancies activate the space while a field of trees with circular seating elements creates a space that anyone can come and enjoy.
Our aim was to humanise this building type, while relating to the aluminium and glass facades of the context. In place of the context’s bold colours and strong graphic sunshades, we used warm, natural materials with fine, human-scaled tectonic details. The ground floor is expressed with off-form concrete frames, creating a structural rhythm while incorporating shopfronts and entries. The office floors have horizontal steel channels with vertical sunshades in-between. The aerofoil profile sunshades are orientated on each facade for optimum solar protection, enabling highly transparent glazing to maximise visible light and connect occupants with nature.
In addition to natural ventilation and passive solar shading, the design has a 306kw/h photovoltaic array on the roof, making it Net Zero operational energy and achieving Gold WELL, 5-star NABERS, and 5 Green Star ratings.

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Brindabella

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<h3>25 King is designed to showcase leading timber engineering, an honest expression of materials and structural and sustainable ideologies that differentiate it from typical office developments.</h3>

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25 King is not a boutique, experimental or demonstration project, but rather a commercially viable alternative to steel and concrete construction in mid-scale office buildings.
Architecturally, the building is an extruded, glazed rectilinear volume that expresses its floorplate. Its all-timber side core on the north enables an open and unencumbered floorplate for maximum workplace flexibility. ‘L’ shaped solar shades arrayed across the west façade  reduce solar heat gain, which is essential in Brisbane’s harsh climate.
A glazed ‘verandah’ volume attached to the extruded floorplate volume addresses the primary street frontage. The ‘verandah’ is raised on structural timber ‘V’ columns to create a generous shaded pedestrian colonnade programmed with indoor/outdoor retail. The entry lobby off the colonnade draws this honest expression of natural materials inside the building via its timber and off-form concrete; a chevron green wall, composed of plants angled toward natural light, completes this space.

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25 King’s basement and ground floor structure are concrete due to damp and the potential of white ants. Above the ground floor, however, the entire simple column and beam structure was designed and constructed in timber. Its design resulted from resolving competing priorities: the columns and beams not only had to achieve the most efficient structural spans, but they also had to be economically sized for transport and handling on site. A 6&#215;8 metre grid allowed for reduced column and beam sizes, and their slenderness allows the structure to read as joinery. Glulam timber was used to make the columns and beams, while the floor planks and core walls were made from cross laminated timber (CLT). Diagonal Glulam bracing on the building’s facades provides additional lateral restraint.
To maximise floorplate flexibility, services were left exposed beneath the timber structure, with major services reticulated in specially designed zones with shorter spans and reduced structural depths adjacent to the core and facade.
Throughout 25 King, the interior office environment glows with the warmth of timber from the columns, beams and floor soffit. The use of natural materials in the interior—as opposed to concrete, steel and plasterboard—better connects occupants with nature, fostering a happier and healthier work place.
25 King sets a new global precedent for timber building. Its combination of structural, construction and sustainable efficiencies allowed us to create the tallest timber commercial building with the largest floorplate in the world, demonstrating that timber construction is a viable alternative to steel and concrete in mid-scale commercial office buildings.

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25 King

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<h3>Our design approach to 91 George Street is anchored by two elements: the place-specific characteristics of Burramattagal Country, where the site is located, and the Colonial Georgian architecture of the adjoining Perth House.</h3>

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The design challenge was to complement the symmetry and proportions of Perth House, while reducing the building’s lobby footprint to maximise the heritage curtilage and provide sightlines to the historic residence.
The proposed 60-storey tower design aims to deliver a high quality and sustainable office building set within this historic context in the Parramatta CBD. The project adopts a ‘start with Country’ approach and embeds ideas developed in collaboration with local Traditional Owners that will catalyse opportunities for Aboriginal culture to flourish.
A shared basement access enables the creation of a new landscaped square, Burramatta Place, activated by restaurants and cafés. The public domain is open and accessible, weaving together Burramatta Place with the building forecourt and formal garden around Perth House into a cohesive place that benefits the community and tenants. The lobby is raised from George Street and flanked by a ravine garden on one side and a balcony on the other which overlooks the new public square and stitches together the tower’s public domain.

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The façades incline outwards at the buildings base, interpreting the verandah of Perth House in a timber structure that creates a sheltered and screened base. Cantilevered verandah-like edges on each floor provide opportunities for collaboration and circulation within a human-scaled space. At mid-point, the façade breaks to reveal communal sky verandahs, which provide outdoor opportunities for collaboration and working.
Passive high-performance façades, natural ventilation and low carbon materials create a sustainable design capable of being carbon neutral.

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91 George Street

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<h3>Our mixed-use redevelopment above the historic Parcels Post Office building will celebrate heritage and demonstrate leadership in sustainability initiatives.</h3>

The Parcels Post Office is an integral part of the historic Central Railyards Precinct and was originally designed as a four-storey Georgian-style building. To add a tower above the heritage building without being overbearing or diminishing of its character, a design strategy utilising the concave and convex curves of the historic design was employed.
A cluster of ‘pill’ shaped forms complement the heritage building’s curved corners, creating slender vertical proportions while reducing visual bulk. This cluster of forms respond to the functions and recall the shape of indigenous message sticks.
Referencing the craft and materiality of the original Parcels Post Office, a contemporary interpretation pairs concave terracotta fins to create a human scale grid, visually uniting the various tower functions and providing passive shading and insulation.

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The tower design consists of 10 levels of hotel facilities, including 204 rooms, and two levels of hotel amenities. The commercial office space above is accommodated across 22 levels, offering highly flexible and contiguous floorplates suited to the evolving needs of technology-driven businesses.
At ground level, a redesigned Henry Deane Plaza with activated edges will integrate public art and heritage interpretation. Enhanced pedestrian links will improve connections in the precinct, while a diverse mix of settings will encourage people to relax and socialise.
Post Office Building stitches together the site’s significant historic character with its wider, future-focused precinct, creating a contemporary addition to the skyline whilst complementing the existing fabric below.

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TOGA Central

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<h3>1 Denison is a highly permeable building that promotes visual connectivity and openness — hallmarks of today’s workforce ideals.</h3>

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Located in the centre of North Sydney, immediately adjacent the proposed Victoria Cross Metro Station, our aim was to design a podium that is highly accessible, active and permeable at ground level, with a human scale and materiality. Its warm materials and human scaled spaces balance the tower’s glass and sleek expression.
The podium consists of two primary levels, a ground floor and a raised office level. The ground floor incorporates a pedestrian through-site link that extends the existing link between Little Spring and Walker Streets and connects to the Victoria Cross Metro station. The northern edges of the link are lined with retail, while the southern connects to the tower’s two lobbies.
Denison Street, with its cafes and restaurants, is also to the south beyond the lobby entrances. Tenancies sit under the podium overhang and open onto the laneway, breaking down indoor/outdoor boundaries via operable walls. A terraced mezzanine level above has additional dining areas with planting to add landscape to the groundscape.

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Like <a href="https://www.batessmart.com/projects/victoria-cross/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Victoria Cross</a>, 1 Denison helps anchor the North Sydney Central Laneways Precinct. The tower’s landscape plan prioritises pedestrians and creates a new, active groundplane by allowing pedestrians to cross mid-block through numerous squares. Major path identification helped to pinpoint where greenery, street furniture, art and water features will be most effective. They are all generously incorporated into 1 Denison’s design.
We have created a highly connected and contiguous floorplate, based on a side core typology. The structure is designed to maximise flexibility of the fitout. The workplace for Nine Network takes up 22,000sqm at 1 Denison, with a fitout that reflects the brand’s values &#8211; active and aspirational, progressive and exciting. Bates Smart led the strategy, fitout and design for this workplace, which prioritises open, light-filled project workspaces that radiate from a central hub in order to support the fluidity and speed of the newswroom’s activity.

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1 Denison

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<h3>The Victoria Cross development will transform North Sydney’s traditional CBD into a vibrant community heart by integrating the new Metro Station with a new office tower, a dining and retail precinct and an interconnected public domain.</h3>

The tower will be a powerful, singular expression—able to be read ‘in the round’ on the city skyline, yet revealing its complexity upon approach. It is composed of a series of 8-12 storey expressed volumes and fine grain of external shading which subtly varies depending on the orientation of each facade
The floorplates have been designed with connectivity and flexibility in mind. The long span of structure maximises visual and physical connectivity across the workspace.
Victoria Cross contains four levels of office space within its podium. These spaces connect to an OSD sky lobby at level 2. The interconnected office and sky lobby create a rich overlap between community, metro customers, podium office employees, and OSD tenants and visitors, knit the building into its social context, and maximise activation of the public domain.
The OSD sky lobby is an expansive space enjoying looking out over tree canopy onto the new Miller Street public domain. We designed it to be active beyond normal business hours and as a space that can flex to many different uses. Accessed from both the main lobby on Berry Street, and the secondary lobby off the laneway, it contains commercial office reception areas, a lobby cafe, and a large lounge area and informal meeting spaces. Adjacent to this space are the lift lobbies serving the tower. External balconies lining the western edge spill out from the sky lobby and create a second level of activation in the public domain.
Back at ground level, five new food and beverage outlets open out to the public domain. They sit between the tower’s main entrance and the Metro entrance, enjoying prime location and acting as activity centres at the tower’s base

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The through site link between Miller and Denison Streets directly connects to the Victoria Cross Metro Station and doubles as a vibrant pedestrian laneway. This neighbourhood scale streetfront—it’s 7.5 metres wide—has been designed for cafes and casual food and drink offerings, as well as a two storey destination restaurant and bar offering. Our intention has been to create a beating new heart for North Sydney which extends the life of the commercial core beyond 6pm Monday through Friday, and into evenings and weekends to create a vibrant, urban centre.
Surrounding Victoria Cross, we have created spaces where people are comfortable to meet, work and socialize – spaces for sharing a coffee or an informal lunch are created under the canopies of trees. The tower anchors the North Sydney CBD Laneways Concept Plan, integrating new public spaces at 1 Denison Street and 100 Mount Street. Extending the MLC lawns and boulevard planting north along Miller Street to Berry Street will create a new series of urban plazas interspersed with new green lawns. The new through site link and Miller Street plaza will complete the vision for a unified public domain in North Sydney.

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The Victoria Cross Station entry is clearly visible at the corner of the Miller Street through site link. From here escalators take passengers directly down to the station concourse level. Escalators take passengers from the Denison Street link down to the concourse level. The link also helps to clarify circulation through to the surrounding streets, increasing pedestrian permeability and connecting into existing bus stations.

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Victoria Cross

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<h3>Fulcrum Green Square is envisioned as a contemporary workplace that reflects the confluences of place, past and progress, in the form of two sculptural volumes connected by a naturally ventilated mass timber social space.</h3>

Uniquely sculpted by the site’s complex urban alignments and sensitive to its post-industrial context, the building’s expressionistic form is a modern interpretation of the area’s sawtooth industrial architecture. Exposed services, landscaped outdoor terraces, naturally ventilated social spaces and contiguous floorplates appeal to city fringe tenants, such as technology and creative professionals.
Arched openings at ground level celebrate the area’s industrial history and give character to a public space that will be home to cafés and retail. The two volumes house workplace neighbourhoods with individual identities, connected via a social heart constructed of mass timber, which encourage connectivity and collaboration. Façade materials and scale recall previous factories through contemporary masonry, while landscaped roof terraces create biophilic connections to nature and restore biodiversity.

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Designing the project as two separated volumes allows for an activated through-site link to the adjoining pocket park, creating an urban scaled building entry and forming a smooth public domain transition from the Green Square railway station.
Weaving together public space, retail, workplace and transport, Green Square creates a shared design that can meet the needs of the public as the precinct continues to grow.

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Fulcrum

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<h3>2 Bligh Street’s renovation seeks to complement its modernist neighbours via a calm, confident interpretation of the original building that rediscovers its lightness and elegant simplicity.</h3>

Two major exterior renovations have changed the architectural expression of 2 Bligh Street since the building was completed in 1958. Its most recent, by Bates Smart in 2018, returns the building to its original modernist elegance while exemplifying contemporary sustainability principles.
We chose to reinforce the logic, symmetry and character of the original structure, rather than superimpose a vivid new identity. In a real sense, this return to the building’s original character and expression is the ultimate exercise in recycling and reuse for the 21st century.
We began by stripping the building back to its structure. To transcend a simplistic reading of the façade, we chose to clad the columns in a low iron textured glass that appears to capture and radiate light, simultaneously expressing and dissolving the structural grid. Dark reveals on the columns accentuate the lightness of the glass grid while creating depth in the facade.
A street canopy continues the building’s parti. It reads as a solid black element, while its underside is lined in translucent textured glass. The textured glass continues into the lobby, lining its walls, while mirrors dissolve surfaces to increase spatial perception. Travertine was selected for the floors, recalling the building’s early modernist heritage.

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In a world that values newness and novelty, as exemplified by its surroundings, 2 Bligh stands out to promote the value of recycle and reuse, without regressing to the kitsch aesthetic often associated with these values. The calm elegance of Stephenson and Turner’s original building has been rediscovered.
2 Bligh’s refit establishes its next 50 year lifecycle. This is the most sustainable uses of an existing structure, minimizing waste and reducing embodied carbon. The façade and services have been completely renewed to update the building to today’s standards and achieve a 5 Green Star rating; a 5 Star NABERS ratings is also being pursued. We worked closely with ARUP, the project’s façade consultant and services engineer, to create an integrated solution for retrofitting an existing structure with contemporary technology. A collaborative working relationship with Lipman, the builders, ensured everyone worked together to create a high quality project.

Philip Vivian

Managing Director

MSc (Urban Design), BArch (Hons), FRAIA