The towers are conceived as three sibling buildings within the RSHP masterplan for Barangaroo South, each with their own identity.

They form a western extension to Sydney’s CBD, meeting increased demand from tenants for large floorplate offices, and integral to the ongoing viability and success of Sydney as a global city and key financial centre.

Together they assist in completing Sydney’s framework of tall buildings, established at Circular Quay and adjacent to the Botanic Gardens, with a rising form from south to north and a strong edge to the open water beyond. This cluster of buildings, similar in height to some of the existing CBD buildings, completes the city’s northwestern limit.

Each office tower responds to its unique geographic and environmental condition, along with the changing solar load throughout the day. This response has informed the design development of the floorplate and facades, bringing diversity and individuality to the design of each building.

One of the aspirations for the project was to set new environmental benchmarks in Australia. This is achieved through the combination of solar shading, glass technology and thermal performance directly responding to context, orientation and solar path. Energy consumption is reduced by arranging the lift cores and ‘vertical village’ community spaces on the northern elevation of the building, which provides shading for the internal workspace. These vertical villages – which include communal breakout spaces and meeting areas – enable visual and physical connections to be made between floors and encourage social interaction between users and visitors throughout the building. The precinct-wide centralised plant spaces allow the whole rooftop to be used as an open terrace and the podium roofs, vertical villages and building insets all provide the opportunity for planting, adding biodiversity to this urban site.

The towers sit on a three-storey plinth conceived as a carved piece of ground that mediates between the waters’ edge and the cliff edge presented by the city behind. The plinth creates a tight human scale streetscape with lobbies alongside other street activities such as retail and leisure. To minimise the number of service vehicles entering the development, the buildings share a common basement accessed from a single point of entrance, leaving the surrounding streets fully pedestrianised or pedestrian prioritised. All these factors help to generate a public realm that is vibrant and animated an