Office Partitions
The ANZ building houses 6500 people – as many as a small town – and its vast ground floor has the feel of a town square. Australia’s largest commercial building in area, it incorporates the equivalent of 80 storeys of office space in just 10 storeys. No staff member sits more than 11 metres from natural light.
Bovis Lend Lease won the bid for the project in December 2005, taking responsibility for design, development and construction. The architects were Lend Lease Design, the company’s architectural arm, headed by Darren Kindrachuk, and Hassell, whose chairman Ken Maher is also professor of architecture at the University of NSW.
Chris Carolan, Lend Lease’s project director for the ANZ centre, said the challenge was to create a design that was ”not too bulky, had human scale, added to the public domain and was inviting … You need to walk the whole building to appreciate the whole thing,” he told BusinessDay.
Maher said ANZ’s accommodation requirements also had to be adapted to the low-rise controls of VicUrban’s master plan for Docklands, and ”provide a contemporary workplace with high levels of daylight”.
The building has distinct individual floors, skylights and two atriums, with the floors exposed to daylight from each side. It has views of the river, the city, the Bolte Bridge and Docklands. Open-plan work stations intermingle with recreation and kitchen areas.
”We came up with the idea of having large floors at lower levels, stepping back to smaller floors at upper levels, which allowed the building to ‘step back’ from the river to meet the control guidelines,” Maher said.
”That also meant you could get a changing floor-to-floor character as you move up the building. Wrapping those linear floors around the two atria that flood daylight into central spaces gives a sense of common space.”
Reed said the aesthetic appeal of the building was subjective. ”Personally, I am comfortable with its streetscape and ‘fit’ into the surrounding environment, although there will always be architects who disagree with its design,” he said.
The building’s ”green” credentials include wind turbines, solar panels, a green roof, gas-generated electricity, water recycling, proximity to public transport and bicycle spaces galore.
Black water recycling means the building uses less mains water.
”We recycle 90 per cent of the water in cooling towers for the air-conditioning,” Carolan said. ”The Yarra is used as a heat sink to cool the building.” The water is filtered and cooled before being returned to the river.
Underfloor air-conditioning gives greater flexibility to move work stations. Solar and wind make up 7 per cent of the building’s base load power, while 60 per cent comes from gas turbines and tri-generation. The gas generates electricity, the heat from the combustion is used to heat the building, and heat is put in absorption cells – ”a sort of black box” – that cools the building in summer.
Wilkinson said the use of river water to cool the building was interesting and innovative, however she cautioned that research that compared global rating tools had suggested Green Star ratings may not be as stringent as other environmental tools.
”For example, a 5 Star Green Star building would equate to a ‘good’ rating using the UK BREEAM system ['excellent' being the highest rating possible],” she said.
Carolan said while it was difficult to provide Australian star ratings for buildings in different climates, ANZ’s would be a leader.
Maher said the architects had been keen to make the building feel more organic. The ground floor ”common” area contains lots of timber , particularly ironbark, a recycled hardwood.
”Timber is a warm product and gives a different character – not the cold, institutional character that often permeates in the workplace. It’s more domestic in character … The timber also reflects the maritime character of Docklands.”
Source: The Age
