Sydney's remarkable vision for urban renewal and development

Regular visitors to Sydney over the past few years will have noticed the gradual transformation of the down-at-heels western part of the CBD. What was once a container wharf with no public access is now witnessing one of the major urban developments the city has seen and rivals many of the large developments occurring worldwide.

It’s a remarkable vision for urban renewal and development involving commercial development and government agencies and is a project on a similar but grander scale to Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour developments.

The Barangaroo precinct adjacent to Darling Harbour covers 22 hectares and is one of the largest sites of public art and cultural activity in the country. It will be a landmark in the nation’s commercial and cultural landscape. 

Lend Lease is developing the area known as Barangaroo South and it is intended to be a sustainable community with a 6 Star Green Star – Communities rating representing world leadership in the design and delivery of sustainable communities. It is envisaged that, once completed, one in 20 CBD workers will be coming to Barangaroo South each day,

Barangaroo South is targeted to become Australia’s first large-scale carbon-neutral community and is one of only 17 projects globally to be part of the C40 Cities-Clinton Climate Initiative’s Climate Positive Development Program. The precinct is capable of being water positive, with an on-site blackwater treatment plant capable of supplying one million litres of recycled water a day to the precinct and surrounding suburbs. Barangaroo is also targeting zero net waste to landfill by 2020. 

At the centre of the development is a trio of new tower blocks – The International Towers designed by the project's lead architect, Lord Rogers. The three buildings will be home to global anchor tenants including PwC, HSBC, Westpac and KPMG. Renzo Piano is also involved with three buildings, named One Sydney Harbour, which will house 775 apartments.

The tallest building in the development will be Wilkonson Eyre's 235-metre high Crown Sydney Hotel Resort. The firm won a competition in 2013 to design the building, with a nature-inspired design that architect Paul Baker describes as "three petal forms which twist and rise together".

Upon completion Barangaroo South will become home to about 1500 residents, 23,000 workers along with more than 80 new retail outlets and over 50% of the precinct will be open public spaces.

Already a number of eateries have established from the fast food emporium “Canteen” to the more upmarket “Cirrus,” which has a sustainable seafood menu including delicacies such as Northern Territory mud crab.

The area is also home to a range of shops including David Jones, which has created a boutique shop selling a limited range of goods targeted at the residents and office workers. 

The Public Art and Cultural Plan for Barangaroo programme will be delivered jointly between the NSW government and Lendlease. The programme sets out nine priority public art programmes which will be funded through a levy of 1% on its development partners, Total funding available from the levy will depend on the actual development cost but is estimated over the 15-year life of the Barangaroo project to be a total of more than $40 million.

Most of the funding provided by the Lendlease levy will be allocated to seven pieces of permanent public art. There will also be a series of cultural activities such as an artist-in-residence programme and civic events that, along with world-class architecture and design, should make the area a cultural destination.

The first public art commission for the area was a collaboration between Bidjigal/Eora elder and senior artist Esme Timbery and Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, The artwork is located on the southern facade of the Alexander residential building at Barangaroo South and is intended to act as a gateway along the waterfront promenade, Wulugal Walk. 

The work celebrates the shell-work tradition of La Perouse aboriginal community of Sydney as well as the contemporary practice of Esme Timbery. It is constructed with multiple 10mm-thick aluminium panels decorated with a combination of larger-than-life cast or folded aluminium shells welded to the screen adjacent to their corresponding cut-out shell shapes on the panel. 

Lendlease’s Andrew Wilson said the artists’ approach is a continuation of traditional knowledge and connection to country: “It will also reinforce a sense of place among modern architecture and will be the first of many artworks at Barangaroo that will challenge, inspire and influence the community.”

In line with Lendlease’s approach to sustainability one of the new buildings, International House designed by Jonathan Evans and Alec Tzannes, of the architectural practice Tzannes and is built largely with timber, creating architecture reminiscent of the spaces often found in Sydney's historic timber or cast iron and brick buildings from the era when warehouse buildings were crucial to Australia's maritime economy.

The building is made from the Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (Glulam) building materials. Constructed with wood, CLT has a far lower carbon footprint than other building materials, the production process produces zero waste and timbers are sourced from certified sustainably managed forests.

The area is set to become a new suburb of Sydney, with a ferry terminal being constructed and, even though Wynyard Station is only a five-minute walk away through a newly constructed tunnel and escalator system, it will also have a new metro line.

John Daly-Peoples travelled to Sydney with assistance from Destination New South Wales