An existing 186m tall building repurposed into a 50-storey commercial development forming the centrepiece of the wider Quay Quarter precinct.
This project extended the design life by 50 years by grafting 45,000m2 of new office space to the reused part of the structure, creating a 216m tall hybrid. Adaptive reuse of two-thirds of the original 45-year-old tower as the backbone of the new building conserved 12,116 tons of embodied carbon with a carbon footprint estimated at 239kg CO2/M2.
This radical adaptive reuse project transformed the building scape of the quayside area.
The structural engineers, builder, and client collaborated on a unique digitally twinned design and construction process for optimum retention of the original tower while increasing floor area significantly.
The engineers’ use of comprehensive investigation, sampling, testing, and instrumentation maximised the contribution the existing structure could make to the final building so reduced new work considerably. This particularly noteworthy in a building originally built over 40 years previously to very different code requirements.
The project is a fantastic demonstration of structural reuse and adaptation without compromise.