 | DEUTSCHE BANK PLACE A new commercial tower by Foster and Partners with Hassell responds to changing work patterns with large, flexible floor plates and a dramatic atrium.
REVIEW Philip Vivian
PHOTOGRAPHY Richard Glover
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Panoramic view of
Sydney towers from
The Domain, with
Deutsche Bank Place in
the centre.
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Elevated
view of the tower as
seen from the west.
The structural system is
seen on the facade as a
three-storey, V-shaped
chevron superstructure.
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The “assembly” as
seen through the glass
facade. Fifteen metres
high, this grand plaza
aims to contribute to the
public life of the city.
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Looking across the
assembly, with its linear
water feature, to the
lobby.
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Retail
tenancies animate the
assembly space.
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View of the dramatic
atrium and the lift lobby.
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Looking up into the
atrium space and at the
glass lifts.
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Rapid advancements in information technology
have given rise to new work styles, and companies
have had to adapt their management methods to
remain competitive. As a consequence,
contemporary management culture is more dynamic
and less hierarchical. The new flatter work culture
requires teamwork, creating an increased emphasis
on social and informal interaction between workers.
These changing work styles have influenced office
building designs since the late 1980s, resulting in
demand for a new type of work space. Typically this
means large floor plates unobstructed by columns
and services. These deep floor plates are often
associated with strategically placed atria that
introduce light onto the floors as well as creating
focal points for vertical circulation and to encourage
interaction between workers.
London’s Foster and Partners has been a leader
in the exploration of innovative designs for office
buildings since the inception of the practice,
commencing with the Willis Faber and Dumas
Headquarters (1971–1975) in Ipswich, moving to
high-rise projects such as the Hongkong and
Shanghai Bank Headquarters (1979–1986) in Hong
Kong and the Commerzbank Headquarters
(1991–1997) in Frankfurt, and culminating in their
current series of high-rise towers that includes
Sydney’s Deutsche Bank Place at 126 Phillip Street
(1996–2005), Swiss Re Headquarters in London
(1997–2004), and the yet-to-be-completed Hearst
Headquarters (2000–2006) in New York. Collectively
these buildings have challenged the dominant office
building typology of the central core high-rise, with
typically undifferentiated floor plates. In its place
Foster has explored the humanization of the
workplace by organizing the building into a series
of “vertical villages” through the introduction of
sky gardens and social spaces such as atria. These
buildings show signs of a consistent set of
architectural themes, including the expression of
external vertical circulation cores, the use and
expression of innovative structural solutions, the
use of natural ventilation and day lighting to reduce
energy consumption, and the creation of public
spaces at the base of buildings to integrate them into
the public realm of their respective cities.
It was this lineage that attracted the developer,
Investa Property Group (formerly Principal Office
Fund), to Foster and Partners when in 1996 it
consolidated the site for a new premium high-rise
office building in Sydney, at 126 Phillip Street.
Their selection followed a world tour to visit a
shortlist of international architects that included
Helmut Jahn, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and
Cesar Pelli & Associates. The selection of Foster and
Partners was based on the firm’s rational approach
to architectural design, due to the client’s belief in
“driving the value of a building through its
functionality”, which Chris Wagett, Principal’s
project director, describes as “being able to be
flexible and adaptable, with all elements, including
structure, aligning with a planning module … to
maximize its efficacy, or effectiveness, not simply
its efficiency.” Foster and Partners project architect
Sven Ollmann summarizes the brief to the architects
as “to create the most efficient floor plate Australia
has ever seen”.
Foster and Partners were aware of the
information-technology-based shift in work styles
calling for large, flexible floor plates that create
spaces for people to interact. The concept of the
open floor plate, however, “evolved through the
design process”, recalls Foster and Partners director
David Nelson, and underwent “rigorous design
comparisons and checking to ensure its financial
viability”. The design concept resulted from the
site’s long and narrow dimensions, which were too
narrow for a traditional central core building. The
design places 64-metre-long-by-21-metre-wide floor
plates to the east of the site. In a move of structural
bravado the 21-metre widths are made in a single
span, eliminating columns from the floor plate
completely. This span is unquestionably the largest
column-free span for any office building in
Australia, and redefines column-free space for
premium office buildings. To stand on the floor
plate and look from one end to the other, over
1,200 square metres in a single column-free area,
is breathtaking and a feature that is clearly appealing
to tenants.
To achieve this unencumbered floor plate the
core has been placed on the west side of the site,
remote from the floor plate, where it provides solar
protection to the main office areas. The concept of
a detached side core is not new to office buildings,
having its precedents in Skidmore Owings and
Merrill’s 1958 Inland Steel Building in Chicago as
well as Australia’s ICI House in Melbourne by Bates
Smart & McCutcheon from the same year. What is
innovative about the Foster concept, however, is the
introduction of a full-height atrium between the core
and floor (the tallest in the Southern Hemisphere)
and the use of scenic glass lifts. The atrium allows
light to penetrate the floor on all sides, creating
what could be described as the ideal floor plate –
column-free, totally unencumbered by services, and
with light and views on all sides. A ride in the glass
lifts gives the surreal sensation of gliding vertically
up through the city on one side, while on the
other flying past office floors on the outside of
the building.
The lift core is situated directly on the street
boundary without the usual podium and setback
required by the City of Sydney’s imitation of New
York’s contextual zoning laws. This configuration
had promised to demonstrate how to successfully
integrate a contemporary tower into the city without
a podium, enlivening the street with the mechanical
ballet of the lifts. Unfortunately, the use of a dark
glazing to the lift core all but hides the constant lift
movement during the day and leaves an
unwelcoming street-level experience.
The lack of a significant structural core as well
as its offset location created an interesting challenge
in achieving lateral stability for the building. The
solution was a composite structure whereby the
tower columns and floor plates have been designed
as a braced frame, which acts together with the core
to create the lateral stability. The architects have
expressed this unusual structural system on the
facade as a three-storey, V-shaped chevron
superstructure. The chevron profile creates a play of
light and shade that accentuates the superstructure,
giving the building a muscular and honest aesthetic,
in contrast to the curvaceous skin of Renzo Piano’s
nearby Aurora Place.
The superstructure continues above the building
to create a roof feature in the form of a triangulated
exoskeleton, the angle of which is dictated by the
solar access plane to Martin Place. The original
concept was for the roof element to contain a glazed
biosphere with plants to cleanse and recycle air
from the building. This would have incorporated
another Foster theme of integrating sky gardens into
their buildings; however, it was eliminated to meet
the cost plan and, ironically, to comply with the City
of Sydney’s regulations for roof features, leaving the
building with a hollow and meaningless gesture on
its roof. The superstructure and roof feature do,
however, create a distinctive skyline profile for the
building, giving it more presence than its modest
31 levels would otherwise have allowed, as well as
creating a transition in scale between the towers at
the northern end of the city and the lower-scale
buildings around Martin Place.
The tower’s facades consist of expressed
mullions that give vertical emphasis to the
building’s proportions. However, the vertical
expression is not simply an aesthetic preference
created by a “clip-on” section. In this case a
customized extrusion was made to allow the
mullion to be externalized, thus maximizing the
usable internal area. Despite this specialist
component, it is unfortunate that the facades do not
respond to the Australian climate, being unshaded
and undifferentiated by their orientation.
At ground level a 15-metre-high covered plaza,
known as the “assembly”, has been created beneath
the tower, resulting from Foster and Partners’ belief
that “buildings should contribute to the public life
of a city”. The space is lined on one side with retail
tenancies, and on the other with the office lobby.
A raised linear water element runs centrally down
the length of the space to separate the two uses.
While admirably open and public, and becoming
more active as retail tenancies open, this space is
always likely to suffer from a lack of direct sunlight.
This building is not a typical Foster design
documented in London. While Foster and Partners
was the lead architect, responsible for the
concept/schematic design and design development
(jointly), there was a large Australian team whose
skills contributed to the realization of the concept.
Of particular note are Hassell, who was the
collaborating architect, responsible for the town
planning approval and all phases following the
shared design development; and Bovis Lend Lease,
who was in charge of the project management and
construction of the building, as well as the structural
design, and was integral to achieving a solution that
met with both the approval of Foster and Partners
and the cost parameters of the project.
While the clarity and rigour of the concept, the
structural bravura and expression, the public space
and the expressed vertical circulation are all Foster
trademarks, some other aspects of the design feel
compromised. It is particularly disappointing that
the building, as a result of value engineering, has
not incorporated the innovative environmentally
sustainable approaches that we have come to expect
from the Foster team. The building’s strength,
however, is the reinvention of the detached side
core building typology with a remote core and
full-height atrium for the information age. As a
result, Deutsche Bank Place is a new benchmark
for commercial floor space in Australia, and has
achieved the client’s aim of the most effective floor
plate in Australia.
PHILIP VIVIAN IS A SYDNEY-BASED ARCHITECT AND A
DIRECTOR OF BATES SMART.
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DEUTSCHE BANK
PLACE, SYDNEY
Architect Foster and
Partners—project team
Norman Foster, David
Nelson, Gerard Evenden,
Sven Ollmann, Muir
Livingstone, David
Crosswaite, Arthur
Branthwaite, John
Blythe, Dirk Henning
Braun, Daniela Dähn,
Glenis Fan, Alfredo de
Flora, Fleur Hutchings,
Edmund Klimek,
Thomas Lettner, Fiona
McLean, Alex Morris,
Paul Morris, Carsten
Mundle, Ross Palmer
Daniel Pittman,
Caroline Rabourdin,
Eva Siebmanns,
Nick Sissons, Carmel
Thomas. Collaborating
architect and landscape
architect Hassell.
Project manager and
construction Bovis Lend
Lease. Structural
engineer Lend Lease
design, Arup. Quantity
surveyor Rider Hunt
Australia. Mechanical
and electrical
engineering Norman
Disney Young, Lincoln
Scott, Roger Preston
and Partners. Fire
engineering Stephen
Grubits and Associates.
Vertical transportation
consultant Norman
Disney Young. Facade
consultant Arup. Client
Investa Property Group.
Principal tenant
Deutsche Bank Australia.
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