🏙️ CASE STUDY | One Sydney Harbour, Sydney 🇦🇺
Three shimmering residential towers now rise beside Sydney Harbour on one of Australia’s most ambitious urban regeneration projects.
This is One Sydney Harbour, Renzo Piano’s contribution to the Barangaroo skyline.
📍 Location: Barangaroo, Sydney
🏗️ Completed: 2024–2025
📏 Tallest tower: 247 m
🏢 Towers: Three residential buildings
🏠 Use: Luxury residential
🌊 Setting: Sydney Harbour waterfront
🏗️ Three Towers, One Composition
One Sydney Harbour was designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop as three slender towers of different heights.
Rather than treating them as three independent skyscrapers, their positioning, proportions and façades were developed as a single composition.
The tallest, Residences One, rises to approximately 247 metres.
Residences Two reaches approximately 230 metres, while the smaller Watermans Residences creates a transition between the towers and the surrounding waterfront development.
Together they contain more than 800 residences.
✨ A Façade Designed Around Light
One of the most interesting aspects of the project is its relationship with Sydney’s extraordinary natural light.
The towers use highly transparent glass façades combined with angled façade elements intended to catch and reflect changing daylight.
From different positions around the harbour, the appearance of the building’s changes continuously.
🌊 Building Beside Sydney Harbour
The location is exceptional, but technically demanding.
Barangaroo occupies former industrial and container port land on the western edge of Sydney.
One Sydney Harbour forms part of the enormous transformation of this waterfront into a new mixed use district incorporating commercial buildings, residences, public spaces, parkland, restaurants and transport infrastructure.
Its foundations, structure, façade and construction logistics therefore had to be coordinated within one of Australia’s largest urban redevelopment programmes.
🏠 Inside the Towers
The buildings were designed to maximise views towards:
🌉 Sydney Harbour Bridge
🏛️ Sydney Opera House
🌊 Darling Harbour
Apartments incorporate large areas of glazing and wintergardens, helping blur the boundary between internal living spaces and the harbour outside.
Residents also have access to extensive shared amenities including pools, fitness facilities, private dining and landscaped spaces.
🏗️ Project Team 🏙️
Developer
Lendlease
Design Architect
RPBW Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Executive / Local Architect
Lendlease Design
Main Contractor
Lendlease
Structural Engineering
Robert Bird Group
Building Services / MEP Engineering
Arup
Façade Engineering
Arup
Landscape Architecture
Grant Associates
Interior Design
State of Craft
Vertical Transportation
Schindler Group