Inspired by the desire to achieve more than just create a building, the GPT Group’s Wollongong Central is the tale of an urban transformation – the creation of a series of new spaces and activities that integrate the surrounding streets and the city centre. The Illawarra region is characterised by a unique dichotomy – the perception of a tough and gritty town defined solely by its history as a steel town, and a rich, almost achingly beautiful landscape held tightly between the rainforest-clad escarpment and the Pacific Ocean. This friction defined the architecture of the building: a heroic, engineered and precise outer shell reflecting the man-made, which unfolds to an interior space that is warm, organic and sensual, reflecting the natural.
Fundamentally, this development is about connection to place, to light, and to the city. The building connects the northern and southern parts of the city via a soaring five-storey timber public street, knitting together existing and future parts of the city. The street’s undulating forms evoke an escarpment; the curve appears to open and close, permitting light and shadow to fall. This connection of the built-form out (rather than the typical inward-looking model) was vital in establishing a cohesive response to the life of the street and then of the city.
Photography: Dan Schwalm
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With 11,000 employees across more than 250 locations, HDR is an award-winning integrated architecture, engineering, and planning firm with a history of challenging conventional practices and innovating across disciplines and geographies. Our interconnected, global knowledge exchange and borderless approach means that we have real-time access to research, data and technology that enables us to design solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.
Australia’s Architecture practice specialises in Health, Education, Science, Civic and Defence – and we design and deliver projects across a multitude of sectors at every scale, whether that be state-of-the-art laboratories, paradigm-shifting hospitals or healthy cities that act as antidotes to loneliness.
We have transformed hospitals from conventionally monolithic, closed systems; designed major infrastructure and precincts that impact context and communities; delivered highly adaptable education and laboratory research facilities that cultivate knowledge transfer; and built justice and defence facilities that intersect health, community and sustainability.
Key projects include Westmead Health Precinct Redevelopment; University of Sydney and Health Infrastructure NSW’s Sydney Biomedical Accelerator; CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness; Chris O’Brien Lifehouse; Sunshine Coast University Hospital; University of Sydney’s Life, Earth & Environmental Sciences Building; Ed.Square Town Centre; Wollongong Central; and the Australian Defence Force Academy Redevelopment.
HDR is currently ranked No. 2 in the World Architecture Survey of Top 100 Global Architecture Practices, with six of our market sectors in the top 10.
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