International: Renzo Piano to Design One Sydney Harbour

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

The upcoming residential towers at Barangaroo South, One Sydney Harbour are set to be designed by world- famous architect Renzo Piano. The development team at the highly anticipated address has chosen the Renzo Piano Workshop to design the three residential buildings planned at One Sydney Harbour. Developer Lend Lease held a competitive bid process that included a number of companies from across the globe. The design firm’s only other Australian project is the 2000-built Aurora Place office and residential towers, also in Sydney.

According to Lend Lease’s Barangaroo South Managing Director Andrew Wilson, the project is “a once in a lifetime opportunity to create the most desirable high-rise apartments ever built in Australia.”

The residences are set to be the second residential release at the Barangaroo South development, as specified in a plan that is currently up for approval. The initial residential offering at the project was launched back in August 2013 and consisted of 159 apartments in the Anadara and Alexander buildings. Those units were sold out in a matter of hours.

Renzo Piano Workshop currently has offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York and is responsible for a number of iconic buildings throughout the world such as The Shard London, The New York Times Building in New York and Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia. According to Renzo Piano, a Pritzker Prize recipient, the idea for the development is “to design three buildings with a gentle presence in the cityscape and in dialogue with the harbor waters and Barangaroo waterfront.”

The Barangaroo precinct dates back to the 1850s and currently represents the linking element between the city’s CBD and the foreshore of the harbor. The area includes the world-famous Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.