205 NORTH QUAY TOWER
Brisbane, Australia
CLIENT Cbus and Nielson Properties
PROGRAM Class A high-rise office building with premium services (auditorium, childcare, meeting rooms, outdoor swimming pool, wellness amenities, and sky-terrace); restaurant, street-level food & beverage retail; and above-grade parking
AREA 89,000 m2 (958,000 sf)
STATUS Invited competition, first prize 2019; completed 2025
ARCHITECTS Hassell | REX | Richards & Spence
PERSONNEL Dylan Bachar, Maur Dessauvage, Álvaro Fernández Gómez-Selles, Nicolas Lee, Araceli López, Michael Paraszczak, Joshua Ramus, Raúl Rodríguez García (PL), Alfonso Simelio Jurado, Xuancheng Zhu
CONSULTANTS Arup, Front, Luxigon, MKA, Schindler
CONTRACTOR Multiplex
205 NORTH QUAY TOWER
Brisbane, Australia
CLIENT Cbus and Nielson Properties
PROGRAM Class A high-rise office building with premium services (auditorium, childcare, meeting rooms, outdoor swimming pool, wellness amenities, and sky-terrace); restaurant, street-level food & beverage retail; and above-grade parking
AREA 89,000 m2 (958,000 sf)
STATUS Invited competition 2019; first prize 2019; completion 2025
ARCHITECTS Hassell | REX | Richards & Spence
PERSONNEL Dylan Bachar, Maur Dessauvage, Álvaro Fernández Gómez-Selles, Nicolas Lee, Araceli López, Michael Paraszczak, Joshua Ramus, Raúl Rodríguez García (PL), Alfonso Simelio Jurado, Xuancheng Zhu
CONSULTANTS Arup, Front, Luxigon, MKA, Schindler
CONTRACTOR Multiplex
The tower at 205 North Quay takes advantage of its thin ‘L’ shaped site to update Lever House’s original real estate equation by Gordon Bunshaft. Like Lever House, 205 North Quay asserts its commercial value not by willful form, but by shrinkwrapping a slender, highly-efficient structure in an equally efficient, state-of-the-art enclosure tailored to Brisbane’s subtropical climate.
The aggregation of plots constituting 205 North Quay’s site forms an ‘L’ shape, which—after the required setbacks are applied—generates a northwestern leg that is too small to organize the building’s main mass.
Core and shell are designed to intensify the building’s simplicity, office diversity, and ultra-transparency: the extraordinary sense of floating above the Brisbane River.
Within the setbacks, a pure, highly efficient 73.5 m x 25.5 m extruded tower can be situated. 205 North Quay accepts this conventional—albeit thin—shape for its low- and mid-rise floorplates.
Its core is placed within the north quadrant of its rectangular plan to maximize views to the Brisbane River and South Bank’s cultural district. The asymmetrical position of the core provides shading from Brisbane’s harsh northwest sun and maximizes usable area at the retail and lobby levels adjacent to Herschel St.
By extending the northernmost structural bay of the high-rise floorplates (after the mid-rise portion of the core terminates) into the site’s northwestern leg, remarkable office space—with an intimate, private proportion—is created with direct views down Brisbane River’s southwestern stretch and to Mount Coot-Tha.
The resulting building maximizes leasable area where it is of highest value, while respecting setbacks and accepting the majority of a typical tower’s conventions.
To further increase the high-rise floors’ lease rates, their height is increased to 5 m floor-to-floor from the standard 4 m floor-to-floor speculative office height of the low- and mid-rise floors.
Catering to boutique tenants within these floors, multi-story volumes, vertical connections, and other signature spaces can be constructed in two of the southeastern structural bays (where views are most impressive) due to interior beams with bolted-only connections and removable floor decking panels. An operable façade composed of jalousie windows is also included on the southwestern elevation to enable winter gardens, if desired. These elements, along with the cantilever, define the bespoke character of the high-rise typology of North Quay Tower.
To provide amenity and diversity for the low- and mid-rise floors—likely to be occupied by a single, large tenant—a lush arbor is inserted 7.5 m above the ground level retail, integrated with the office lobby.
The arbor is an oasis at the nexus of The City and Caxton Street Districts, with views to the river over Riverside Expressway. Additional features defining this office typology include two ‘breathable’ floors (with operable awning-style windows) and structural ‘soft spots’ adjacent to the core that enable primary and transition stairs at will up the height of the low- and mid-rise sections.
Four floors of parking are interleaved just above the office lobby, conforming with the dimensions of the tower and the standard 4 m floor-to-floor height, such that these levels can be retrofitted to offices as the future of mobility changes.
At grade, the tower forms a protected plaza off Herschel Street, a cocoon flanked on both sides by inward facing retail. The plaza has bold in-ground planting organized to allow for a variety of activities, from markets to exhibitions to performances. The northeastern bank of retail continues through the building along the lane, reinforcing the pedestrian connection to Roma Street Station. Entries to parking and loading are off Herschel Street and North Quay, respectively, to minimize negative impact to pedestrian flows.
Continuing the commitment to efficiency, views, and light penetration, the entirety of the edifice is wrapped in a conventional, four-side supported, silicone glazed curtainwall on a standard 1.5 m module. Its color neutral double glazing is highly transparent with a Visual Light Transmission (VLT) of 0.62. The last meter of the ceiling is tapered to the façade to increase daylight penetration and rental value. The curtainwall mullions are designed with an integrated building maintenance track for easy cleaning and glass replacement.
Enabling the façade’s high glazing ratio, VLT, good interior lighting and color rendition in the context of the newly adopted, stringent Part J of the Australian National Construction Code, the building is veiled in a copper anodized, extruded aluminum sunscreen composed of large ovals. Rolling the shading surface takes advantage of geometric rigidity to use less material compared to conventional fins and overhangs while also blocking more solar heat gain. The ovals have a subtle fluting pattern to their interiors to improve stiffness and reduce glare in the office environments. The design requires only four extrusion dies mirrored for each tube. The pitch of the oval cuts is optimized for solar exposure on each facade orientation with minimal projection depth.
Shading performance of the tailored ovals is comparable to a fully glazed design using heavily tinted glass or a low window-to-wall ratio design. The ovals block more direct solar gain from the critical north and west orientations than conventional triangular or rectangular shading overhangs and fins, and solar transmission is reduced by 63% as compared to an unshaded curtainwall.
