Victoria Cross set to transform North Sydney’s commercial heart

Philip Vivian, Head of architecture firm Bates Smart specialises in large scale, mixed use urban projects and leads the planning, design and implementation of Metro over-station developments at Victoria Cross, Pitt Street South and Parramatta. Jessica Paterson, an architect by background, is Project Director for Lendlease at Victoria Square. They talked with Hamish McDonald about Victoria Cross station in North Sydney.

CAN YOU TELL US WHAT IS GOING TO MAKE VICTORIA CROSS A SPECIAL DEVELOPMENT?

JESSICA PATERSON : Lendlease secured the Victoria Cross project back in 2018 as an integrated station development. What this means is that we are delivering the new station on behalf of Sydney Metro, and the tower and precinct that sits above the new Victoria Cross Station. The new metro is a huge catalyst for change in North Sydney which will make it a special development.

PHILIP VIVIAN: The tower will be a symbol of the Metro line. We picture Victoria Cross not as a building, but as a place --it’s got so many functions: the Metro itself, a landmark tower, a co-working building, restaurants and bars, a hospitality building, a retail arcade. Each building has a different character, and they’re all woven around our public spaces. There’s a civic green running down one side, north-facing so it’s got sun, terraced lawns where people can sit out and relax, with restaurants looking out on the ground floor. It’s got a little narrow laneway that connects with Denison St. So, it’s really a collection of buildings that creates a place. It’s not one big building – it’s lots of related smaller pieces and public spaces.

WHEN YOU SAY IT SYMBOLISES THE METRO, IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT ITS APPEARANCE THAT

WILL DRAW PEOPLE IN?

PHILIP: It’s going to be one of the tallest buildings in North Sydney, so it’s certainly going to be a symbol on the skyline. As Jess mentioned, it’s an integrated station development, so the tower literally sits over the station. When you come out of the station, you’ll see the columns of the tower coming down, so you’ll feel the structure of the tower. You’ll come up the escalators – they are about 25 metres, some of the tallest on the line – and you’ll literally be standing under the structure of the tower.

JESS: The Victoria Cross Station will be one of the largest across the Metro line, in volume of space so it’s a very impressive experience. And when you surface from the station you’re met with this really fine-grained precinct. Features like our three-storey white brick building that will be our retail anchor, called No.1 Miller. This whole place experience is going to be quite incredible, a game-changer for North Sydney.

PHILIP: The two train lines, in different directions, are in one cavern. It’s enormous, cathedral-like! I’ve been looking at it for seven years now. When you first go down into that space your jaw drops. When you come up through the station, it’s certainly complex in terms of engineering, because you do have a building sitting over a station entry. But the design focuses on how, as people exit onto the street, they’re integrated into North Sydney.

This will be the new social heart of North Sydney. Certainly, in the morning they’ll come out of the Metro and disperse through North Sydney, but they’ll also come here at lunchtime, they’ll come back in the evening to go to bars, restaurants. It will really be a social activity centre.

JESS: Then if you look at the scale of the CBD and what it will do for North Sydney, the metro is going to pull North Sydney into the CBD. There’ll be an exponential increase in connectivity. As a comparison it takes you about seven minutes to walk from Circular Quay to Martin Place but if you catch the Metro from Vic Cross to Martin Place it will be five minutes. This will significantly change how we conceptualise North Sydney. We partnered with UNSW and the City Futures team to see what the impact the Metro is going to have on travel times. From Marrickville to North Sydney, at the moment it might take you 60 minutes. When the metro comes that’s going to halve. From Bondi Junction to North Sydney now is about 45 minutes; it will be about 30 minutes.

So you’ll see talent corridors open up. Different businesses will look to occupy in North Sydney because of that connectivity increase and this new amenity in this new precinct.

PHILIP: Sydneysiders haven’t yet understood the transformative potential of the Metro. When the first line through the CBD opens next year, our level of connectivity will go through the roof. It will reframe the city in people’s minds, how quickly you can be somewhere. North Sydney is no longer a fringe, it’s actually a part of the CBD.

JESS: The CBD will be pulled northwards. Like what we did at Barangaroo, we pulled it sideways to the western corridor. This project will do the same.

The centre of North Sydney is going to have a shift as well. This will be a new centre and we’re seeing a huge amount of development around the station. North Sydney currently has a lot of B and C grade buildings, so you are going to see an uplift in quality in the area directly around the station.

IS THE NEED TO LURE STAFF BACK FROM WORK-FROM-HOME A FACTOR HERE?

JESS: People like to be around people. If you’re collaborating – that’s best done in person. With the Metro coming, time spent on commuting is cut. We’re looking at restaurants and places to meet. Our retail strategy is key as well, bringing a new wave of retailers into North Sydney. We already see retailers currently in Surry Hills, the CBD or Bondi eyeing this opportunity gap that’s here in North Sydney. Because so far there’s nothing much here outside the nine-to-five.

PHILIP: North Sydney has lacked that amenity. It’s always been short of restaurants and cafes and public spaces in the sun. Victoria Cross was designed pre-covid, but it will help attract people back.

But more than that, tenants aren’t just looking for an efficient and functional office space, they’re looking to be part of an activated precinct. Yes, they’ve got space in a building but there’s places to meet, public spaces where you can relax, spaces where you can just open a laptop, sit down in a park or café. We lifted the lobby up, what we call a sky lobby, where you go up one storey, specifically to get restaurants underneath fronting onto the public spaces and to activate the ground floor with fine grain retail.

JESS: So that’s an interesting point for us: how do we think about the commercial lobby of the future. No longer a transitional space that people just walk through. So we are looking at hotel lobby references and that feeling you get when you’re in a hotel – you feel hosted – and how we can bring some of those ideas into commercial lobby spaces.

PHILIP: No more marble mausoleums! More authenticity, bringing nature into lobbies, and getting a kind of natural connection, not this this sort of cold, air-conditioned, stainless steel and marble space.

JESS: Part of the lobby where you can dwell, you can have a meeting, do some work, hold an event. One of our commitments is a 200sqm community space in the lobby, and getting the broader community involved in programs. One program we’ve got in Victoria Cross is called “Girls in STEM”. There are 17,000 high school students in North Sydney, with a significant proportion of girls’ schools, so the students studying those science, technology, engineering, maths subjects we bring them through and talk to them about what the future in property or construction could look like.

WHAT ARE THE SUSTAINABLE FEATURES BUILT INTO VICTORIA CROSS?

JESS: It’s going to be one of the most sustainable buildings in North Sydney, and there are reasons for that. As part of the property industry, we are all trying to work out how to decarbonise our buildings. One of the things we did during covid was switch out the gas from the heating of the building to an electric model. Another was looking at energy efficiency – we are planning to target a have a 5.5 NABERS rating and a 6 Star Green Star rating. Thirdly we’ve decided to be powered by renewable energy. Then we look at how we reduce the embodied carbon in construction, incorporating 30% recycled material into the concrete we’re using. It’s a really finely tuned building. Thirdly we’ve made a decision to be powered by renewable energy. Then we look at how we reduce the embodied carbon in construction, incorporating 30% recycled material into the concrete we’re using. It’s a really finely-tuned building.

PHILIP: The building has passive solar shading, reducing energy demands. We have horizontal and vertical shading to the north. The tower has a very extensive west face where you can get that really high heat load, so we’ve got a series of fins that are angled 37 and a half degrees. We’re very fortunate that the harbour views are to the south, so we can angle the fins at the view and protect ourselves from the sun. They actually drop off on the bottom of the building because we get enough shading that we don’t need fins, so that’s saving carbon because you’re not putting in things unnecessarily. And then using materials like brick which is a low carbon material around the base of the building. We’re always trying to use low-carbon materials and reduce our operational energy demands.

SO HOW CAN WE SUM UP WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO CREATE?

PHILIP: Public spaces will be the really special thing for people coming to Victoria Cross: narrow laneways that connect into the rest of North Sydney, cafes and fine-grain retail, restaurants above. The different types of work and tenants will give you a more vibrant mix and greater diversity. Then this very generous, wide green civic boulevard where people can lie on the grass and have lunch, or sit in these restaurants facing north, getting sunlight. It will give people a space to be, even if they’re not a tenant. It’s really going to be quite a democratic public space.