Description

Renzo Piano’s first design sketch for the Aurora Place office building situated in the heart of Sydney’s business district shows a tower formed of several curved glass sails and open to the sky. As often happens with speculative projects in city centres, economic pressure, local planning provisions and construction requirements have forced the design into a more rationalised mould. The urban development plan provided for a block perimeter as pedestal with a tower block set back from the street. Piano interpreted this as a consolidated zone with a piazza covered over by a glass roof. The earth tone terracotta, typical of Piano, defines the orthogonally arranged entrance area, both inside and out. Above this ‘terracotta base’ – which fits well into Sydney’s streetscape – a smooth glass shell, curved throughout its length, soars upwards. The cone-shaped silhouette of the 41-storey building is created by bilaterally extending the overall length of each additional floor by a total of six metres. This, in combination with a slender, excentric service core, results in flexible rental units of different sizes. The protruding façade creates areas protected from the wind on the slender north and south ends of the elliptically formed building. Winter gardens have been placed in these locations, without plants but with louvered façades that can be opened. The winter gardens – as well as the unpretentious foyer – represent a further noteworthy contribution to local high-rise architecture. Used in Australia for the first time, they offer staff the space for formal and informal meetings, a unique view and direct contact with Sydney’s temperate climate. In spite of the property developers’ initial scepticism, the winter gardens and the conical form of the structurally sophisticated tower have given it a crucial marketing edge. Both the gain in floorspace in the upper storeys that goes with the form, and the winter gardens, give it a considerable commercial advantage in Sydney, a city in which the view is one of the principal criteria in the property market.

Its opaque fritted curtain wall make the partially air-conditioned building stand out. The glass panels were carefully optimised to meet a wide variety of requirements ranging from exploitation of daylight and energy efficiency to appearance. For example, the moderately reflective and low-iron glass, guarantees a high degree of transparency from both inside and out. The matt-white ceramic frits and its low E-coating, provides protection against overheating by the sun. In addition, its colour creates a link to the city’s famous opera house designed by Jørn Utzon.

Only a few commercial office towers leave room for architecture. Renzo Piano’s Aurora Place is a commercial success, a speculative office building with high-quality detailing and an expressive form.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.