Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
European Prize for Architecture laureates Henning Larsen Architects and landscape architects McGregor Coxall have designed a 183-meter-tall skyscraper as part of the development of Cockle Bay Park on the Sydney waterfront.
The project has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Cockle Bay Park links Sydney’s CBD to the waterfront at Darling Harbour, covering an area over the Western Distributor freeway that currently acts as a barrier between the city center, the waterfront, and the thriving Pyrmont district.
“Looking at Sydney, and especially Darling Harbor, we felt that there was a need for a destination with a different sense of scale and, within that, an opportunity to introduce a new park into the heart of the city,” said Henning Larsen partner Viggo Haremst.
The “ground” level, in fact, comprises multiple; an expansive, state-of-the-art retail program sits alongside and is woven into an expansive public park that stretches from the elevated main level to the waterfront below.
Wide pedestrian paths frame a continuous public path through the development and serve as the link between the shops, restaurants, and bars on site.
Cockle Bay Park focuses on the eye-level experience of the development’s two scales: the city scale, where the tower joins the skyline, and the village scale, where people move between the city center and the waterfront.
Cockle Bay Park’s unbroken silhouette slips seamlessly among the towers of Sydney’s CBD, breaking down into more human-scaled pieces as it reaches the public and retail spaces at the ground level.
This interplay of scales is respectful of both Sydney’s urban fabric and the diverse community of people it is designed for.
The tower, which is threaded together by public space, defines a new type of high-rise development that mixes traditional retail, office, and public program into a unified, human-centered environment.
The ground-level comprises 10.000sqm of park space, the most expansive addition of public space central Sydney has seen in a century.
The tower Cockle Bay Park is a microcosm of Sydney itself, a city unique in its ability to entwine a friendly, local community atmosphere within a cosmopolitan city.
Darling Harbor is already an ideal site in multiple respects; its proximity to central Sydney and the Pyrmont pedestrian bridge makes Cockle Bay Park an extraordinarily prominent waterfront district.
The design amplifies these strong elements of the harbor by connecting to existing pedestrian opportunities, while also building up dense layers of amenities and greenery.
Currently, an under-utilized and low-lying commercial strip with the backdrop of Sydney’s soaring skyline, Cockle Bay Park will bring a significant increase of densification and park space to this side of the Western Distributor.
Cockle Bay Park delivers a unique solution for the project by introducing a human-centric design for the podium, incorporating an elevated outdoor street that cuts its way through the podium and boasting spectacular views of the water at every turn.
It’s also partly sheltered from the prevailing wind with just enough breeze coming off the water to make it an ideal spot in the summer.
Energy and climate modeling allowed for optimization of the microclimate in and around the development.
Project: Cockle Bay Park
Architects: Henning Larsen Architects
Landscape Architects: McGregor Coxall
Retail Designers: Geoffreything
Client: AMP Capital and GPT Group
