The various uses
within the building are all accessed through a central twisting atrium. The
overlapping use of the atrium reinforces the role of the building in the city,
echoing the grain and variety of the urban context in microcosm. The vitality
and activity on the street is drawn visually and physically up through the
atrium. The building is active over an 18 hour period - a resident of the
apartments on the top 2 floors can walk to work in the city centre passing through
the retail floors, stopping to pick up a coffee and on the return journey home
make use of the gym facilities before progressing upwards to the residential
levels. In parallel an office worker has a range of facilities to avail of from
gym to restaurant, shopping to car parking.
The scale and
form of the building has been manipulated to reduce the visual impact onto the
surrounding streets, restricting visibility from the immediate street level to
the 5 lower floors of retail. Cutting back the upper portion of the form also
allows natural daylight to enter the surrounding streets.