Central Park Precinct is the largest urban regeneration project of its kind in Sydney. With an abundance of public parkland, the area comprises of mixed-use residential (including student accommodation), commercial, hospitality and retail facilities, and a unique public recreational activity area.
The project aims to become Australia’s greenest urban village, taking the former Carlton United Brewery site in Chippendale, and creating a people-centric, new destination for Sydney. This billion-dollar project involved the regeneration of the 5.8-hectare site to create a mix of new residential, commercial and retail, as well as recreational activity in the main area of parkland and other open spaces.
The development brief also included features such as:
- A new park of over 5,000m2
- Several new pocket parks
- An integrated landscape plan for the site
- A new urban square adjacent to the retained heritage buildings of the Irving Street Brewery
- Retention and adaptive reuse of 29 heritage items
Striving for the highest sustainability rating, Central Park aims to use sustainable energy and water infrastructure at a scale not seen before in Australia. To cover the precinct’s energy and water needs and to deliver wider benefit to the surrounding communities.
To achieve a high environmental rating, Central Park incorporates world-class social and environmental sustainability initiatives, including housing its own on-site tri-generation plant and recycled water network.
WSP in Action
One of the major innovations at Central Park is the 2.2MW Central Thermal and Electric Plant, which we designed. Our client had bold ambitions to create a plant that supplied all the buildings with energy, while simultaneously creating a greater level of open private space for residents. Our client was also looking for capacity to service off-site customers, including the adjacent University of Technology Sydney’s Broadway Campus.
We developed technically efficient and commercially viable strategies to resolve the plant spatial requirements and facilitate a staging strategy. Our dynamic simulation and urban utility modelling tools made for a rapid prototyping process. We used techno-economic analysis to smooth the way for an appropriately sized and modularised low-carbon technology solution – trigeneration. Our plant design uses natural gas to supply low-carbon electricity, heating, hot water and air conditioning to commercial buildings as well as hot water to domestic dwellings.
To create the largest precinct-based, chilled and heating hot water reticulation network in Australia, our services included:
- Thermal and Electrical Demand Analysis
- Urban Utility Modelling
- Techno-economic Optimisation of Plant and Equipment Configuration
- Sustainability Certification
- Sustainability Compliance
- Design Analysis
Additional services delivered:
- Mechanical
- Electrical
- Hydraulics/Plumbing
- Vertical Transportation
- Fire Safety
- Fire Protection
- Precinct Master Planning
- Lighting
WSP, particularly our Built Ecology team, has been involved since project inception and provided an integrated service that embeds environmental sustainability in all aspects of the precinct development. We have been responsible for coordinating the Green Star strategy across the precinct and act as the liaison with the Green Building Council of Australia. Our role has included rationalising precinct infrastructure within the building-based sustainability assessment tools and coordinating precinct and building-specific project teams to deliver the precinct’s Green Star ambitions.
Valuable Outcomes
Central Park Sydney has already received various international and national awards including a Gold Award for Excellence for Sustainability in Design for its urban utility strategy.
