FJMT is leading the design for a mixed-use hotel, residential and retail development for central Sydney that will feature two interconnected 80-storey towers at its centre.
The development at 338 Pitt Street will occupy nearly half a city block in Sydney’s mid-town precinct, with six podium buildings designed by four different architecture practices acomodating retail and hotel uses.
Trias will design the 249 Castlereagh Street building, Polly Harbison Design will design the 241 Castlereagh Street building, Aileen Sage Architects will do Pitt Street Hotel, and Jerde will do the retail spaces. Martha Schwartz Partners and FJMT Landscape will be in charge of the public domain architecture, while FJMT will design the two signature towers.
Designed to be “restrained and elegant” the slim towers will be be highly visible on the Sydney skyline, with unobstructed views from Hyde Park and the east side of the CBD.
The towers will predominately house apartments but the south tower will have hotel rooms up to level 17. A mid-level bridge comprising two double-height levels will connect the two towers, with a restaurant and bar open to the public on one level and the hotel and residential swimming pools and wellness facilites on another.
“The proposal has a distinctive and forward looking form but is also restrained, elegant and reinforces the geometry, urban structure and maturity of Sydney,” write the architects in planning documents.
At the base of the towers, on the ground plane, a network of public spaces will provide permeability within the city block and contributeto increased pedestrianization in the area.
The 338 Pitt Street development, with lead design by FJMT.
“Fundamental to the urban character of the design is the fine grain orthogonal structure of the public domain and streetscape,” write the architects. “The small footprint tower forms nestle into a network of through site links and inmate public spaces addressed and activated by a variety of low scale buildings: a city in microcosm.”
The public domain will also extended vertically through the development, from the basement porte cochere, which is open to the sky to a variety of roof terrace gardens.
The FJMT-led team won a design competition for the 338 Pitt Street site in 2018, with the jury impressed by the “permeability of the ground plane, the flexibility of the podium levels and the opportunity that the two tower form presents to reduce the overall visual bulk and overshadowing of the nearby parks and the public domain, as well as providing superior residential amenity. ”
Other teams that participated in competition were: Zaha Hadid Architects, Architectus, Make and Right Angle Studio; Kohn Pedersen Fox, Crone and Andrew Burns Architecture; Grimshaw, Smart Design, Panovscott and Future City; and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, PTW Architects and Stewart Hollenstein.
The development proposal is on public exhibition until 17 August.
