Bates Smart Delivers Strong Presence With 180 Thomas Street

Five years ago 180 Thomas Street in Haymarket Sydney was a plain building needing a big makeover. However due to the structural columns and central lift core, the four-storey building would not be the easiest to redevelop.

In 2011 Bates Smart were awarded the redevelopment as part of the City of Sydney design excellence competition. Now, three years later a brand new 180 Thomas Street opens its doors with an extra nine-storeys of 5 Star Green Star Office As Built V3 rated offices.

According to Architecture and Design, by winning the competition to design the development, Bates Smart were offered a bonus height and floor space ratio (FSR) by the City of Sydney and responded by cantilevering the entire nine-storey addition six metres beyond the existing podium.

Six mega trusses, each weighing 30 tonnes and measuring 20-metres in length, were fabricated in China and shipped to the site before being placed on top of the old building.

Bates Smart used lightweight steel to cantilever the floor-plate, which benefitted an increased internal floor area and also provided more flexibility with the existing column grid.

It meant the lifts could be relocated to a vertical glass volume on the exterior of the building with no need for further piling, a major tick for when applying for Green Star credits.

The building sits 45 degrees to the north, which afforded Bates Smart the flexibility of designing for either horizontal or vertical shading.  The architects decided to use both, and in doing so created a façade of randomly stacked boxes, each with a different shaped solar shading element.

Bates Smart Director Philip Vivian said as the building is located diagonally across from the new Frank Gehry UTS building, the design needed a strong presence.

“The architectural form reinterprets the semi-industrial linear forms of historic Haymarket to create a contemporary building that respects the diverse scale and context of the area,” he said.

"The form is articulated into a series of seemingly random, stacked, horizontal volumes of varying heights. Each horizontal layer is expressed by a different solar shading system, creating a layered effect of stacked, linear boxes."