One Sydney Park

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One Sydney Park

Firm

MHN Design Union

Type

Residential › Multi Unit Housing
Commercial › Retail
Landscape + Planning › Urban Green Space

STATUS

Concept

SIZE

300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

BUDGET

$100M +

One Sydney Park replaces two large warehouses and perimeter asphalt carparks with a mixed-use development in a park like setting. The site itself is conceptualised as an extension of the neighbouring landscape of Sydney Park, which borders the three primary edges of the site.

Our vision for One Sydney Park is the creation of a place that resonates and extends the ecology of the adjoining parkland. A blurring of the boundary between built form and the park landscape is achieved by dissolving the built edges of the apartment buildings fronting the park. Where adjacent to the parklands, or visible above the existing trees, the building form takes on a deliberately de-materialised quality. The mass of the building is intentionally blurred, emulating the character of the surrounding tree canopies.

At the heart of the project is a Public Plaza. The Plaza is held and activated by the collection of individual buildings around it and the threads of parkland that are drawn in between the buildings towards the plaza. The plaza has a strong vertical connection to the lower arrival level via a sequence of folded and punctured landscaped surfaces which connect and illuminate the level below. A recognition of the typographic changes in the adjoining Sydney Park has seen us treat the landscape around the buildings in a similar way and drives a three dimensional, mutli-level approach. The undulating ground plane supports enclosure, connection, light and the public and private zoning of the external spaces to achieve a landscape condition that serves as a framework for the buildings to be placed upon it.

The base materiality of brick and stone are used to emphasise the transition from the folded typology of the landscape to the verticality of the built form. The solidity of brick is used to ground the building and connect the base layers of the building to the earth. Above the brick base the upper layers are expressed as a light-weight overlapping framework that fragments and feathers into the surrounding park and towards the sky.

The upper floors of all buildings are densely planted, obscuring the building and further blurring the edges of the structure. Sitting within the rooftop planting are photovoltaic solar arrays. Their reflective quality and configuration mirror that of the water bodies found in the adjacent parkland, surrounded by planting and pathways.

The project is a design collaboration between MHNDU, Silvester Fuller and Sue Barnsley Design.