The tallest building in Sydney for nearly 30 years, Chifley Tower’s overall composition has a dynamic profile on the city’s skyline, working within its irregularly shaped site.
The 42-story office tower is located at the edge of downtown Sydney next to Chifley Square. The site opens onto the expansive public green of the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Domain to the east, and the city’s famous harbor and Opera House to the north. At ground level, an interior room opens onto the redesigned Chifley Square. This room and a through-block arcade provide access to three levels of shops and restaurants. The office spaces, with separate entrances on Chifley Square and Bent Street, are housed in two double-height commercial workplaces that adjoin a garden set atop a five-story podium.
The office tower mass, a composition of shifted rectilinear volumes with varying heights that correspond to those of neighboring buildings, rises at the north end of the site to minimize the shadow cast on the square. The resulting façades respond to different site conditions. A broad curving wall of lightly reflective glass looks toward the harbor and the Domain, while the city façade is patterned with punched windows. The strong central rectilinear mass locks into the city’s north-south street grid while sponsoring distinct but simultaneous responses to the harbor, the city, and the pedestrian scale.
