Australia's first green office tower by Ingenhoven Architects and Architectus (interview with chief architects) | Extreme Architecture | News, E-learning, Architecture of the future at news.arcilook.com

Dec 30

Australia’s first green office tower by Ingenhoven Architects and Architectus (interview with chief architects)

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This video presents an interview with Ingenhoven Architects Director Christoph Ingenhoven and Ray Brown, Director of Architectus. These two architects were responsible for a design of the Australia’s first green office tower in Sydney, 1 Blight Street. During the interview directors talk about inspirations, details and advantages and this project. 

Ingenhoven thinks that the building is characterized by the beautiful view on the one hand and on the other hand by two different city grids. The first one looks like most parts of the city and it is normal civic space. The second one which is more official is addressed to governors. Designers tried this elliptic form to avoid to be part only of one of these worlds and set a new standard.  

Photo from sydneyarchitecture.com

Ingenhoven came also with the idea of naturally ventilated spaces and the connectivity between the different floors. He thinks that contemporary work environments are about informal unexpected communication. Frequently people do not have appointment to see or meet somebody and this is where the inspiration comes from. He tried to create from a community form a whole different space where people know each other, know other’s duties. He wanted to avoid the isolation which we can normally find in that kind of buildings.  

Brown talks about suitability of this building. He convinces that it was a major aim of designers. The facility has a whole system which makes the building more efficient. For example there are solar thermal panels on the roof which create hot water. The building produces 100 thousand liters of clean water per day and it is like one olympic swimming pool every two weeks.  

Brown also convinces us that this building is not only efficient. Designers created a lot of public spaces which are really usable. Thanks to them, the space in a front of the building gets some life throughout the whole year especially throughout the lunch period. He feels really proud when he sees people sitting on the steps and having a good time because they were exactly designed for this purpose. 

Ingenhoven points out that the most extraordinary part of the building is its roof. This is not only typical roof with air conditioning units on top. This place was specially designed to allow people to have some rest during the day. They can find there an open space with fresh air and green trees. 

Both designer agree that this building is a really good project. It solved a lot of public, business and developer problems and now it is for them something to be proud of. They think that businessmen accepted this building as a friendly neighbor and they occupied it and this is the best compliment that they could get.