The restoration of the historic Tyne House and 9-storey addition on Wentworth Avenue was the winner of a City of Sydney Design Excellence competition. Located in Surry Hills, the hotel emerges seamlessly from the site’s nine-storey ‘Federation style’ warehouse building. The Chicago style architecture of the warehouse was a driving influence behind the honest expression of the hotel’s structure and planning.

With the external brick façade retained, its internal structure was reconstructed along with a tower sympathetically integrated above it. The new glass-and-steel tower celebrates the city’s historic grit with an expressed frame that draws on the Tyne building beneath it. The tower’s frame clad in terracotta references the masonry character of the surrounding context and offers a modern interpretation of the existing façade.

Each frame is infilled with a projecting bay window and a recessed sliding sash set within metal frames. To the side boundary, the frame is infilled with copper panels with a standing seam that define a language consistent with the tower, while providing depth and resolution to the ‘party walls’.