SCOTTCARVER’s luxury residential project, The Residence apartment tower on Hyde Park, in Sydney, has commenced construction.
As its architects, SCOTTCARVER produced a design, which recognises that the very centrality, which affords these views, also causes the tower to be highly visible from key positions in the city. Great care has been taken to design a building that carries its civic responsibilities with appropriate dignity.
Sales for the 87 apartments have been vigorous, reflecting the power of its unusual location with spectacular views of Sydney’s CBD across Hyde Park and wrap-around views of the harbour and eastern suburbs.
The Residence is refreshing in its monumentality, with the common disarray of residential facade elements tempered by broad verandahs and slender glass screens. This solves an urban design challenge whereby the seemingly conflicting demands of the building typology are reconciled with demands for a calming presence on the park.
The Residence is the first privately owned building in a long line of public and historic buildings that stretches from the Opera House along Macquarie Street then past St Mary’s Cathedral and the Australian Museum on College Street. It is a careful participant in this civic procession, avoiding the temptation to dramatise its conspicuous siting through self-referential iconography.
More locally, the tower is segregated into two slender wings when viewed from the north. These paired forms acknowledge a meridian that runs north between the spires of St Mary’s and onward to the halls of the Opera House beyond.
At street level the building presents a sandstone podium that augments the presence of its historic neighhbours, Sydney Grammar and the Australian Museum.
While The Residence captures value for its inhabitants by exploiting the outlook to Sydney, it adds value to the city by playing to its context in its immediate vicinity as well as its context in the skyline of the City of Sydney.
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