IT Structures
One Park Lane
This is a scheme for one of the most progressive buildings in the Southern Hemisphere.
Its dual towers stretch 100 storeys and 60 storeys respectively, and will reshape the skyline of the rapidly growing Gold Coast area of Southport.
Both towers are wrapped in high-performance glazing with integrated photovoltaic panels. The 100-level Tower 1 is mainly residential with 193 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.
Tower 2 (60 storeys) contains offices and is a simpler but complimentary version of its co-joined partner. The two-tower development is designed to facilitate the new working-from-home or close-to-home way of life. The footprint size of the commercial tower is designed for owner-occupiers who may also live in one of the whole-floor apartments in T1, or for larger businesses to take multiple floors and join them.
Its 12,700 square metres of office space could accommodate as many as 500 workers. It will significantly help fill the Gold Coast’s current office-space shortage.
T1 will be 393m, making One Park Lane Australia’s tallest building.
But height was not our main ambition. In designing it, we considered its aesthetics: the proportions of its silhouette and how it would shape the skyline. Above all, we wanted it to be a future-focused urban village where people enjoy living and working.
Apartments
The ultra-thin building’s shallow shape means that many apartments span two façades. Many windows open and, where wind conditions allow, the balconies are operable. Planters are built in to green the building wherever possible. The dwellings are designed with all the internal amenity of a house: large floor plates, generous rooms and lots of storage. They all have views in multiple directions.
The building’s core is against the western façade. This protects the apartments from western sun and provides a prime location for the photovoltaic panels that run the full height of the accommodation floors.
Ground level
Moreton Bay figs are massive trees with vast shade canopies and trunks up to 2.4m in diameter.
Thick aerial roots droop from their mighty branches, and their spreading root systems form buttresses that create small rooms or enclosures on the ground.
These extraordinary trees, native to coastal Queensland, inspired the base of our towers. Root-like columns straddle and shade an indoor-outdoor zone, part glassed-in atrium lobby and part landscape.
It is planted with Queensland species that thrive indoors and outdoors. They bring shelter and beauty and help minimise the heat island that is inevitable in the subtropical climate.
This heavily pedestrianised space to sit, eat or relax is comfortable all year round, and it welcomes the wider public as well as residents and workers from the towers.
The scale of the high atrium spaces allows natural light into the lobbies. There are suspended planters, lights and pods that break up the vastness without obstructing views.
Tower 2 has a café to bring life to its ground floor.
Shared spaces
A glass-wrapped skybridge joins the two towers at Level 22. It has gardens as well as a function space, restaurant and bar. Expressive trusses join the floor and ceiling, their feet landing in planters like aerial roots on the soil. Besides being a stimulating environment, the skybridge strengthens and brings structural support to the slim buildings it joins.
There’s also a gym at level 60 and a pocket park at level 40 with various amenities for the residents such as lawn areas, barbeques and a vertical playground, all with expansive views of the Gold Coast and its hinterland.
Both towers have skydecks.