By Karl Hoerr -
Symbolic of the rapid technological advancement of the time, Sydney’s first skyscraper towered over the city when it opened in the 1960s. Today, this iconic landmark is being revamped for 21st century law.
Anyone who’s lived in Sydney long enough will likely tell you how much it has changed in their lifetime. The city has been on a seemingly unstoppable march of growth for decades. Not that its people haven’t also faced periods of sustained economic hardship along the way. And the consequences of all that growth, perhaps more so now than for a long time, include the fact that for many, the city has become unaffordable, when it comes to one of life’s most basic needs – housing.
Yet even in the darkest of times, the harbour city has managed to muster the strength to embrace development. It was construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which famously become a source of national optimism during the Great Depression.
Sydneysiders have never been short of an opinion when it comes to their landmarks. Architecture speaks to a time. It reflects our aspirations; who we are and who we wish to be; what we value and how we connect. Even the most functional of buildings and structures can hold up a mirror. Some are unloved, while others gain public appreciation decades after construction, in ways their creators might never have envisaged.
Architecture and the law
The law has long been intrinsic to Sydney’s architectural fabric. Last year’s bicentenary of the Supreme Court of NSW showcased the significance of the King St complex. Its origin story, detailed in the court’s excellent bicentenary publication, Constant Guardian: Changing Times – The Supreme Court of New South Wales 1824 – 2024 by Keith Mason and Larissa Reid, leaves one wondering how the buildings ever came to be, let alone how they later came to be saved.
As outlined by Mason and Reid, the court would have relocated to a “monumental” new structure, under 1930s plans to demolish most of the buildings on the eastern side of Macquarie St. Of course, those plans were never realised. In 1977, the Supreme Court, along with the Federal and High Courts, found new premises in the Law Courts Building at Queens Square, which has since undergone significant refurbishment, completed in 2012.
And since 1991, the Downing Centre has housed the Local and District Courts, in the heritage-listed former Mark Foy’s department store. Some buildings are spared, and perhaps repurposed, while others are given over to the bulldozers in the name of progress.
But what of the office spaces across the CBD, where law firms have occupied floors and made the administration of justice possible? Firms have come and gone from buildings as their needs have changed. Lawyers work in vastly different ways to how they did just a few decades ago.
There’s one significant Sydney office block which, having undergone a complete makeover, will soon welcome multiple law firms, with a view and location that would be hard to match.
The AMP building
The AMP headquarters at 33 Alfred St, known as the Sydney Cove building, was the city’s first skyscraper when it was opened in 1962. Matthew Morel is a Director at architects Johnson Pilton Walker (JPW), which took on the building’s renewal. He says the original building was completed during a period of rapid technological advancement. “This was an exciting time for Australia and for the globe and I think building this skyscraper … was emblematic of Australia wanting to mark its place in this new world.”
The financial services company’s 26-storey tower occupied a prized site at Circular Quay, overlooking the city’s world-famous harbour. At the time, construction of the Sydney Opera House had only just started.
An example of the International Style, the curtain-walled building rose to 117 metres. It was the first structure to surpass the city’s previous 46 metre (150 feet) height limit, which had restricted the skyline since 1912.
It was trailblazing for the city and the landmark developments to follow, such as Australia Square and the MLC Centre. But Morel says the AMP building also pioneered the use of seawater cooling and new methods of fire safety for tall towers. “(It) paved the way, not only in terms of breaking the height limit, but also in terms of technical innovation and technical development,” he says.
On its western facade, a sculpture by Tom Bass depicting the Goddess of Plenty watching over a family, was commissioned to invoke AMP’s motto, ‘Amicus certus in re incerta’ (a true friend in uncertain times).
Looking back at some of the early photos of the building, it’s striking to see just how low-rise the area was. Alfred St was still dotted with ordinary, awning-covered shopfronts, unrecognisable today.
A personal connection
The building’s view of the Harbour Bridge is captured in a treasured family photo of my late grandfather Alfred Civzelis, during construction. Originally from Latvia, where his education at a technical college was disrupted by World War II, he’d just migrated to Australia from England with his wife and daughter. Grandpa worked for Otis Elevators, the company that installed the lifts at the AMP building, which would deliver occupants and visitors to their floor at speeds previously unimaginable in Sydney.
His work on this project was a source of immense personal pride for many years. How exciting it must have been for construction workers to have this unique perspective on a city under transformation, well before staff moved into their new offices and members of the public were able to look out from the building’s observation deck on level 26.
One of the law firms scheduled to move into 33 Alfred St, and the first to sign up according to its Partner and CEO David Newman, is Maddocks.
Joining Maddocks at the new address will be Allens, which will occupy the top nine floors. Pinsent Masons, A&O Shearman and Lander & Rogers will also be there on other floors.
Newman points out that Maddocks is celebrating its 140th anniversary this year. “Our strategy over the past four or five years has been one of modernisation and so the renewal … of the building and the modernisation of the firm … spoke really well.”
Maddocks is working with design firm Bates Smart on the interior fit-out for floors seven to 10 and says the building’s past is a key part of the brief. “We’ve really … tried to reflect that history in the design and the furnishings and the colour palate.”
Morel says prior to work starting, the building was not living up to its show-stopping location. “It has front row seats to the drama of Circular Quay and the best views in Sydney, but it also had the smallest windows, in terms of commercial floorspace. So it was the most prestigious when it was built but in 2014 it was B-grade office (space).”
The International Style
JPW set about researching other buildings of the same style, which had undergone renewal. There weren’t many examples, but the list included the United Nations Secretariat building in New York. “We were excited by the challenge but also daunted and trepidatious and felt a responsibility to do our best … due to (the building’s) prominence and … the great affection that people hold for it,” says Morel.
Opening up the windows while retaining the building’s external appearance, including its distinctive bands of gold, required flipping the tartan pattern of its aluminium windows on each floor. Morel says it seems simple in retrospect, but it was a complex solution to execute. “[I]n fact, it took some time and quite a number of workshops with engineers, with planners, with the City of Sydney, with the heritage advisers …”
For Newman, this particular change is a terrific achievement. “They’ve brought it into the 21st century, but they’ve done it in a very respectful way.”
Monolithic walls
Another of the building’s original features was its monolithic, tiled walls on the east and west facades. Sadly, this aspect of the tower would not last long. Within a few years of construction, tiles began popping off and falling below, presenting an unacceptable hazard. A decision was quickly taken to cover over the walls with large panels. “What started as quite luminous, lustrous, iridescent walls, for 50 to 60 years, were covered by these panels,” says Morel. “So we said as part of the renewal, let’s … remove the pebblecrete and reinterpret those original walls, but in a contemporary system.”
The search for tiles that would do justice to the original appearance, would take JPW all the way to the Netherlands and the country’s oldest ceramics company, Tichelaar, which has been in business for more than 450 years.
A sample panel of the original tiles was sent to Tichelaar, which provided 100 possible glazes. JPW later narrowed this down to 10 colours. These were then laid out on a tennis court to determine how much of each colour would be used.
The end result is magnificent, offering passers-by an appearance for every different type of weather and time of day. “We’ve been delighted at the way in which the tiles catch the light, even after sunset or before sunrise and dusk and twilight,” says Morel. “They need very little light to shimmer.”
Unique ‘H’ design
For a building opened in the early 1960s, there’s one design feature of 33 Alfred St that means it ranks highly, even among contemporary towers. The side walls taper inwards and incorporate windows. This design, resembling the letter ‘H’ on a floorplan, is considered unique in the world and provides more access to natural light. “We measure how much of the floorplate is within eight metres of the window and so this building outperforms many, many of the best new buildings, due to this unique H plan,” says Morel.
While the building’s interesting history is part of the package, its location was a key drawcard for Maddocks. “For a national Australian law firm to have that iconic view of the harbour between the bridge and the Opera House, it’s pretty iconic,” says Newman.
The firm says its staff are wanting to be in the office more frequently and the trend doesn’t end there. “We’re also seeing our clients come in increasingly as well, whether it be for seminars, or for relationship-building lunches and the like and so being able to provide all that amenity, with the tendent technology across the entire premises is really exciting and that gives us a blank canvas to work from, to make sure that we’ve got all those boxes ticked,” says Newman.
“In Sydney, we are particularly known in the corporate space. We do a lot of private equity work, we do a lot of technology work, a lot of health work.”
“About 45 per cent of our revenue across the country is for government clients,” he says.
The value of stewardship
David Newman says there’s one value most unique to Maddocks, which he thinks aligns particularly well with the move to this historic building.
“[S]tewardship is really around investing now for the future and leaving the firm in a better place than when we found it,” he says. “So the growth that we’ve had in the Sydney office, being able now to consolidate that growth in such an iconic building, with all the amenity that we think we’ll need for the next decade and beyond really talks to that value of stewardship and investing now for the future generations of partners and Maddocks people that come after us.”
Morel says there are many aspects to the building that mean it is well placed to serve discerning tenants for decades to come.
“We have … always felt that the plan was well suited to a contemporary workplace, with a deeper floorplate to the north, with access to harbour views and a smaller section to the south, (which is) more intimate. So this enables workplaces to develop … a variety of work settings within their floorplate. And I think that has been verified by the fact that so many of the city’s top law firms have chosen this 60-year-old building as their new headquarters.”
The use of high-performance glass has improved the building’s thermal efficiency and preserving the original structure has reduced material waste. Morel says construction accounts for nine per cent of global emissions, so this type of project is imperative.
“We don’t only need to build sustainable new buildings, but importantly we need to re-use the buildings we have, effectively,” he says.
“We’re very familiar with the re-use and adaptive re-use or renewal of our older heritage buildings, our sandstone buildings, our masonry warehouses,
but to take a 60-year-old office building and completely strip it and completely renew it, while maintaining its significance, I think … will be a project of international interest.”
