Aurora Towers

A massive yet delicate downtown insertion adjacent to Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens.  The project consists of a 700 foot/44 story commercial tower yielding 530,000 sf of leasable space, a 20 story residential tower, and a glass-roofed public plaza. The compound curving façade of the large tower echoes the Sydney Opera house and the sailboats moored in the harbor.  The building’s double skin, a special stratified glass layer over white ceramic, creates lightness and transparency while acting as a thermoregulator and conserving energy.  The planar glass façade of the residential tower is defined by highly articulated mechanism which opens to the view and breezes of the Botanic Gardens.

Brett Terpeluk’s Role: 1998-2000.  Brett played a key team role during the later design phases and through the final phases of construction in 2000.  Brett’s responsibilities (in Italy and Sydney) included design, construction documentation, and coordination of the following: complex conical façade systems, inclined, louvered penthouse roof and façade interface, structural systems for curving and cantilevered facades, high-rise operable window system, suspended warped-glass canopy and cablenet assembly, custom terra cotta rainscreen cladding, and systems prototyping.