88 Walker St

With its striking cantilever over the heritage listed Firehouse Hotel, this 50-storey mixed-use tower is the tallest building in North Sydney. The team adopted innovative servicing strategies to deal with the condensed floorplates and stringent sustainability targets to ensure the successful delivery of this iconic commercial and hotel tower.

Location

Sydney, Australia

Client

Walker Developments c/o Billbergia Group

Project Value

$153m

Tallest building in North Sydney’s skyline

In responding to changes in climate, extreme weather events such as cyclones, strong storms, intense rainfall, heatwaves and droughts were considered in the design. 88 Walker is a unique building, occupying air space above a neighbouring property.

The 10m long cantilever tower transfers 50 storeys over the 1895 heritage-listed Firehouse Hotel. This led to the substantial composite steel and post tensioned concrete transfer structure being developed at the base.

The eccentric loading required complex analysis of creep and shrinkage to control the lean on the tower and complex analysis of building dynamics for wind loading.

Achieving Future Ready™ excellence

Through close consultation with our client, and assessing the project’s needs through WSP’s Future Ready framework, WSP was able to conceive ground-breaking solutions which met all of our client’s requests. Without sacrificing style for functionality, 88 Walker Street is a benchmark that sets the visual blueprint of what future buildings can look like.

88 Walker has been designed to achieve a 5-Star Green Star Design & As Built rating, demonstrating Australian Excellence, and to achieve 4.5 star NABERS Energy in operation. The project delivers a versatile building with a highly efficient floorplate configuration and strong sustainability credentials. This includes high levels of indoor environmental quality and materials sustainability, while providing in-the-round appreciation of the heritage item.

Managing community expectations

Key to this project was considering the changes in urbanisation and community expectations for local places; distinguishing North Sydney’s skyline as a unique local place for the city’s inhabitants.

Catering to the demands of the area’s population density, the tower’s design makes efficient use of its limited ground floor footprint featuring, a 252-suite hotel with a reception, restaurant, executive lounge, gym, ground level retail, commercial end-of-trip amenities and 22 levels of light-filled open planned commercial office spaces with a Sydney harbour view.

From concept through to construction, WSP has been involved in bringing this iconic high rise to life. Continuing with seamless knowledge and experience on this project, WSP is also involved in the fit-out of numerous commercial floors within the building – advising and catering to the specific requirements of different clients. These fit-outs include both full-floor occupied tenants and split tenancy floor fit-outs.

Commercial offices (SQM)

13,602

GFA (SQM)

24,378

Height

181.2 m / 594 ft

Hotel rooms

252

Office levels

22

Site area (SQM)

1,077