Waterloo Road
The completed commercial office development at 78 Waterloo Road North Ryde has approached the design of the flexible workspace in an innovative and exciting way; the end solution is a building offering the ultimate flexibility for tenancy configurations and size, housed within a building which also offers a level of tenant amenity, environmental awareness and aesthetic quality not seen in the surburban office market Australia wide.
The development proposal consists of 2 buildings linked by a naturally ventilated glazed and operable roofed atrium, sitting on an extensively landscaped "green" podium. The tenancy space is housed within the two wings, linked by sky bridges crossing the atrium at every level. These sky bridges extend through the office space linking the fire stairs and forming the access corridors to the potential sub tenancy spaces.
Building A
Building A fronts both Waterloo Road and Byfield Street and is 6 levels high, with level 1 being the ground floor/entry. As the street gently slopes down Byfield Street away from Waterloo Road, an extra level of street frontage tenancies is provided within the building podium.
Each floor is wrapped with external terrace space to the north, west and south elevations. This offers every potential tenancy arrangement access to an external space. The front edges to the west and north balconies are protected by a operable louvred wall, providing a sense of enclosure to these external spaces, as well as necessary sun control. The glass wall separating the balconies and interior has been made as clear as possible. This combined with the enclosing screens makes the balconies useable as extensions to the office space year round.
The external expression of Building A is of a transparent (as possible) grey high performance glazed box, with 1200 wide glazing panels offering full height, floor to floor windows. To the side and front of this box are attached the louvred balconies expressed as separate volumes. The volume is then further defined by the glazed vertical fire stairs to the Byfield Street elevation.
Building B
Building B continues the design concepts set in Building A. This building is 5 levels high, with level 1 being the ground floor/entry zone. Level 1 is recessed, allowing deep shadows around the base of the building, accentuating the long horizontal floating format. Access is available directly to the level 2 tenancies from the street along Waterloo Road, offering tenants the flexibility of a separate entry, public facility or shop front address. The roof top provides a large terrace for the use of all tenants.
The external skin is similar to building A, accentuating the single volume with balconies to the north south and east elevations. Only the balconies to the north are necessary to be protected acoustically, visually and thermally. The volume again is defined by open vertical firestair cores to the east elevation.