Previously the site of a rather drab, uninviting and underwhelming building, the western edge of Darling Harbour is getting ready for a transformation led by Mirvac’s Harbourside Residences development. The project features a high-rise tower of luxury residences and penthouses, surrounded by an extensive horizontal presence of retail, commercial and public green space.

With views of the city, harbour and even west to the Blue Mountains, the residences will be an impressive offering. From the standpoint of the city as a whole, however, it’s the envisaged improvements to public space that will make the most difference. New landscaped areas will connect to the pedestrian bridge that already acts as a popular thoroughfare between the CBD and the city fringe. The precinct will have over 10,000 square metres of public space, including a new waterfront promenade and 3500-square-metre waterfront park.

Kaare Krokene and Kevin Lloyd – Managing Director Australasia at Snøhetta and Principal at Hassell, respectively – were recently at Mirvac’s display suite to talk through some of the concepts behind the design. Aided by a highly detailed, large-scale model of the whole precinct, they explained how input from Indigenous design advisers at Djinjama helped them gain a deeper understanding of the site. Historically, it was something of a meeting zone between groups in the wider area – a place of encounter and sharing.

Krokene draws attention to this aspect straight away when explaining the project. “No matter how you look at a big project like this, and even if it has a large private component, it’s a public project – it’s a big intervention in the public realm,” he says.

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Lloyd explains further: “[The public space] was part of the original brief, and it needed to connect back to the bridge. It’s seen as part of the connection moving through the CBD and across the bridge to Pyrmont, but also a place for people and the community of Pyrmont – a space for everybody.”

Landscape design will be used as the primary means of realising the connection between the precinct, waterfront and bridge. Lloyd notes how so much of Sydney’s harbourside built environment is “hard,” with this intervention instead aiming to bring a high degree of greenery and soft edges. Significantly increased canopy cover – albeit starting from a low bar – will provide shade, while raised garden areas will create public gathering spaces with stunning harbour views.

The lower areas, while raised from street level, are not to be seen as simply a podium, according to the designers. The whole area is layered with terracing and punctures to the precinct boundary, part of an overall design strategy that makes a virtue of irregularity. The form is also designed to evoke sandstone escarpment. Site boundaries around the waterfront are made porous and pedestrian cross-links pierce the built form along each main axis, while the approach continues all the way up into the tower. Up there, the building’s facade is quietly irregular – “we thought about how we could introduce some subtle shifts to the geometry of the tower,” explains Lloyd. “It gets more playfulness and diversity into the tower.”

Positioned in such a prominent, iconic area of Sydney, the designers are very much aware too of the responsibility they bear. “It’s a big obligation to do a project on a site like this, and straight away we started to talk about how important this is for the community. Probably one of the bigger challenges was not to be daunted by that,” adds Krokene.

Harbourside Residences is set for completion in 2027 and will boast 263 one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments across 48 levels, including three penthouses and three sub-penthouses. The project also features amenities such as outdoor and indoor pools, spa wellness facilities and even a double-storey golf simulator.

Snøhetta
snohetta.com

Hassell
hasselstudio.com

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