The Quay Quarter​ Tower has recently taken top honours, being named 2023’s Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).
Image Credit: BG&E.
The Quay Quarter Tower, a 49-storey vertical building located in the heart of Sydney’s CBD, focuses on sustainability, and is widely regarded as the highest and largest adaptive reuse project ever completed.
During this project, a 190-meter tower constructed in the 1970s was upgraded to a 216-meter tower that meets modern requirements, and now has an extended service life up until 2070.
The Tower was recently named 2023’s Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).
In addition, it won the Kevin Cavanagh medal, the top honour for any concrete structure, at the recent Concrete Institute of Australia Concrete 2023 Biennial Conference in Perth.
Further, it took the overall excellence award at the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Convention in Boston in 2023.
In addition to being crowned best worldwide, Quay Quarter was selected overall winner in six categories: Best Tall Building: Oceania, the Construction Award, the Structure Award, the Repositioning Award, and the Space Within Award.
By evading the wasteful activities of demolition and replacement, the design team managed to retain 65 per cent of the original structure such as beams and slabs, and 95 per cent of the building’s core.
The project saved approximately 12,000 tonnes of embodied carbon emissions, as well as managed to achieve a 6-Star Green Star rating.
For the project, ADAA member BG&E offered their services in structural construction and materials engineering and structural monitoring.
Two-thirds of the floor plates and supporting columns as well as the entire core wall system of the old structure were kept during construction based on rigorous materials testing and structural design of the structural components.
The original structure constructed by kibble and bucket methods of placement (done prior to wide use of concrete pumping in Sydney) contained concrete that had fly ash as part of its binder component.
Like other concrete structures such as Australia Square built in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Sydney, fly ash was a key component that has shown benefit in terms of serviceability and long-term durability of structural elements.
The new structure was also cast with fly ash incorporated in its binder fraction in wall, column and slab elements.
Through this, BG&E has demonstrated that even older, more complicated structures can be upcycled to both cut carbon emissions and extend a structure's service life for future requirements.