51 Pirie St, Adelaide

51 Pirie Street Development is situated in the heart of the Adelaide CBD; the site is well located within the commercial centre of South Australia. The site presents strong street frontages to Pirie Street and Gawler Place.

"Gawler Place is an important component of the City’s intricate east west pedestrian network pattern with strong links to the retail precinct of Rundall Mall and the Cultural Centre beyond."

The proposal takes advantage of the differing characters of Pirie Street and Gawler Place.

The site is currently partly occupied by an existing heritage listed building. The building and its Pirie Street facade exude an architectural quality and character of a bygone era. The opportunity exists to capture the positive elements of this, integrating them into a contemporary workplace environment, creating stimulating work space opportunities that are too rarely available in new build developments of today.

The breakup of the north tower facade picks up on the rhythm of the heritage facade below. It is defined as two rectangular horizontal tube elements sitting on the mega structure. The width of the tubes is defined by the composition of the heritage facade, separated by a zone relating the heritage facade and flagpole pinnacle element.

Within this zone the tube elements are joined together with a facade zipper element. The tubes are capped at the north and south ends with a highly transparent recessed floor to floor glass facade, with appropriate sunshades to the northern orientation. The tube concept is further spatially reinforced by the east and west glass walls, treated as clean reflective skins, visually pinned off the side of the tubes.

This rhythm and play of proportion and scale is defined by the want to marrying the tower and heritage components into a complete and harmonious composition.

The roof top is again activated by creating a covered tenant lounge facility, opening onto a large roof terrace. This space can be configured as a shared or private open entertainment space. If offers dynamic views over the city, into the surrounding landscape and will become a signature identifying space of the building.

The overall building proposal comprises of 20 levels of premium A grade commercial office space; the first 5 levels are located within the podium heritage component, level 6 "pod" acts as a transition level between the latter and the tower component above is of 14 storeys.

The tower floor plates are of approximately 1750m2 each have been designed to be as efficient as possible with all services and utilities located within a side core arrangement along the west boundary, taking advantage of the expansive and uninterrupted views to the north, south and east towards the Adelaide Hills.

The design allows the flexibility of multiple tenants on a floor with minimal corridor access requirements and also allows a major single user to occupy the whole building with the possibility of inter-floor connectivity. Tenant fit out is also maximised by "clean" core walls; free of service cupboards and minimal/shared access points to stairs, amenities and lifts.

The existing heritage building sits modestly among a growing framework of contemporary high rise buildings. This flanking built form overwhelms the size of the heritage building destroying its position in the streetscape composition, "disney-ifying" the visual interpretation of this building in the streetscape.