One Shelley Street

July 8th, 2010

The Macquarie Bank building at One Shelley Street, King Street Wharf on the western edge of Sydney’s CBD is an unlikely accident.

Dispossessed of the customary rectangular livery, it has been enclosed within a striking white diagonal lattice steel frame unlike anything in Sydney – with the exception of Mario Arnaboldi’s 1976 jewel-like curtain wall for EPT House at 273 Clarence Street.

One Shelley Street’s two vertical slabs of dark glass, the rear one higher, are separated to form a tall atrium over which a handkerchief of glass has been tossed to join them. Instead of the expected grid of vertical columns and horizontal beams marking each floor, the glass envelope is held within a diagonal ‘diagrid’ lattice cage of white aluminium-clad steel beams.

It looks wonderfully maverick and eccentric alongside the other denizens of King Street Wharf. But once the site conditions and constraints are properly understood, it turns out to be a convincing and a logical – even inevitable – solution.

A special 28-page section in Indesign #41, on newsstands now, explores the building and introduces you to the many people behind One Shelley Street.

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