Danish architecture practice 3XN-designed Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney has been named the World Building of the Year 2022 at the the fifteenth annual World Architecture Festival which took place at Lisbon’s FIL Exhibition Centre from 30 November to 2 December, 2022.
Named Quay Quarter Tower (QQT), the 206-metre tower, located close to the Sydney Opera House, is an office building arranged as a vertical village, creating a sense of community and providing spaces that focus on collaboration, health, well-being and external terraces.
The building is made of five stacked shifting volumes, 3XN employed a radical sustainability strategy which involved upcycling the existing tower.
The series of stacked atria create a social spine with exceptional views, while also allowing daylight deep into each floor.
"The winner was commissioned to provide a building on a world class site, and to retain a huge proportion of an existing fifty-year-old commercial tower," said Paul Finch, Programme Director of the World Architecture Festival.
"The result was an excellent example of adaptive re-use. It has an excellent carbon story, and it is an example of anticipatory workspace design produced pre-Covid which nevertheless has provided healthy and attractive space for post-pandemic users."
"The client was prepared to risk building out an idea on a speculative basis - it worked," Finch added.
The winner was selected by a super jury of luminaries of the global architecture industry – comprising Tracy Meller, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners; Jo Noero, Noero Architects; John Wardle, John Wardle Architects; Issa Diabaté, Koffi & Diabaté Architectes, and Murat Tabanlioglu, Tabanlioglu Architects.
World Architecture Festival is the world’s largest live-judged international architectural event. This year's theme, tilted Together, the festival's live events programme explored and debated "how architecture has responded to the renewal of collective life post-pandemic, and in the light of commitments to combatting climate change."