1. THE skin has a profile that looks like giant vertical sails that loom over the city of Sydney. The shape of the eastern façade changes slightly on every floor, thus making the façade sweeps out dramatically. The glass façade extends or cantilevers beyond the building enclosure, forming “fins” and “sails” which gently curve from the street level all the way to the top of the building.

BEFORE going to Sydney, I told myself that there were only two buildings that I had to see: the Sydney Opera House (which I had already talked about in a previous column) and the Aurora Place, a high-rise building whose design and form I have always admired.

Aurora Place is composed of two towers—a 45-floor commercial/office building and a 16-story apartment building. It sits along Macquarie Street, which is a few blocks away from the Sydney Opera House. 

Skyscrapers are typically bland. They usually have a rigid, repetitive and vertical form as dictated by their structural requirements. They all look the same because their façades are merely vertical repetitions of glass curtain walls. Almost all high-rise structures are hermetically sealed and fully air-conditioned, totally closing off its users from any direct contact to the natural elements.

Aurora Place, on the other hand, was able to solve these stereotypical design solutions. The building was designed by Renzo Piano, a world-renowned architect and was responsible for the design of high-profile buildings such as the Kansai Airport in Japan, the Tijbao Cultural Center in New Caledonia and the Popidou Center in Paris. It is true that other architects have attempted to recreate the typical skyscraper design, but Piano is one of the few who have been successful in achieving this.

Due to the weight that the building skin creates, the glass curtain wall of a high-rise structure usually follows and is directly attached to its structural form, which, more often than not, has a boxy configuration. In Aurora Place, Piano detached the whole building curtain wall from the structural components by designing a special framing for the glass skin. This gave him freedom to design it in a way that does not need to conform to the building’s rectilinear structure. The skin has a profile that looks like giant vertical sails that loom over the city of Sydney. The shape of the eastern façade changes slightly on every floor, thus making the façade sweep out dramatically. The glass façade extends or cantilevers beyond the building enclosure, forming “fins” and “sails” which gently curve from the street level all the way to the top of the building. The top part of the glass skin is obliquely cut to prevent an undue overshadowing of a public park opposite the site. The forms of Aurora Place were clearly designed to strike a dialogue with the shell-like forms of the Sydney Opera House, which Piano considered as the city’s trademark.

Unlike contemporary commercial towers where the street is physically cut-off from the building by a massive podium, Piano designed Aurora Place without one. He wanted the buildings to have a direct relationship with the urban fabric by not filling up the whole site with the two towers, leaving a huge space for a public plaza where different events and social gatherings are held. The façades of the two towers come straight down to the street, making it literally a part of the site. His choice for finishing material was terra-cotta, creating a human texture, especially on the ground floor, while echoing the common material used in the surrounding streetscape. The granite paving used in the plaza continues all the way inside the lobby, which visually makes one space a part of the other, especially since they are only separated by a clear, nonreflective glass wall. The whole plaza is covered by a glass canopy which stitches the two buildings together. This also provides the users a refuge from Sydney’s occasional rains.

Piano has a special affinity with nature, and that is probably why he provided outdoor spaces on every floor of the commercial building. These spaces are called “winter gardens,” and are meant to counter the monoculture that exists in a typical office tower. They are social spaces or breakout rooms where people can take refuge from the stresses of an office setting and where office users can have direct contact with the Sydney climate. They have operable louvers which the users can adjust according to their preference.

Aurora Place was a complex project that required minds of different specialists from all over the world. It required an accurate and real-time coordination system that would help the designers and builders make decisions faster. For this specific purpose, a Web-based collaboration system was created. It provided a secure, controlled access point for all participants involved in the project which could be accessed from anywhere in the world. The program was called ProjectWeb, and it contained a common set of documents that could be accessed by architects, engineers, suppliers and subcontractors. These range from photo documentations, working drawings, request for information and the like. Today this program is continually being used for multiple projects and has made worldwide project coordination so much easier.

Aurora Place is an example of a building that takes architecture a step forward. Aesthetically, it veers away from the common boxy form of a high-rise structure. Spatially and functionally, it provides spaces in an office tower where its users can still be in direct contact with nature through the provision of outdoor spaces on each floor. Even with the huge spatial requirements of a building, it was still able to provide an open public space on the ground level, physically weaving it seamlessly into the Metro. Technologically, the project was able to create a solution that makes it possible for professionals to easily coordinate with each other worldwide through a Web-based program. This project should be a template for developers and architects. This process should be used not only for high-rise offices, but for every project that they are faced with. We should not only build for the sake of building, but we should build to elevate the existing conditions of our world.

You may e-mail the author at design@buensalidoarchitects.com and visit his web site at www.buensalidoarchitects.com.

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