“For gods perceive future things, mortals present things, and wise men things about to happen.” - Philostratos, Life of Apollonius of Tyana VIII 7
When walking through a city, a moment’s punctuation can change one’s life forever. A moment can turn into a second of consciousness.
At 61 York Street, the past and future meld into one in a composition that is defined by a familiar and contemporary dimension of 2.4m; a dimension that translates to all measures of the building; all proportions; all elements. The composition is refined by the relation of ‘rondo’ in musical composition in both vertical and horizontal reading.
61 York Street sits neatly within the extant fabric of a fine street wall. It offers space and a façade that subtly changes for the pedestrian in a walker’s part of our city. It offers a fine entry hall, open to the elements, five-storeys in height, offering space plus light back to the city; light in its lantern-shades of music patterns that flicker through the white shades of glass. A simple plan develops beyond the façade to include enclosed balconies separating the users from the street with a space of interstitial function; loosely labelled as a balcony; the bases of which lay in the tenets of our culture and our everyday desires; informality, composure and repose. A structural, services and movement core on the south end of the building allows clear-span structure. Windows at both ends of the plan provide ample light within the core space.
Like the structure of the human body, the building’s surface provides many clues as to its form and where the structure emerges; it is raw and transparent as a form that holds. All services are placed tightly adjacent to the core and these services relate and provide to the structure a 4.5 star energy rating which, in a profound movement of the City of Sydney Council, is now a requirement of all structures of this kind.
Project Design Team
Angelo Candalepas - Director
Martin Urakawa - Project Architect
John Wilkin
David Tordoff
Evan Pearson
Marko Damic
Andrew Scott
Awards
World Architecture Festival Commercial Category (Shortlisted) (2008)
AIA NSW Commendation for Commercial Architecture (2008)
