INTERNATIONAL HOUSE | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia | 2016

Architects: TZANNES
Design Team: Alec Tzannes, Jonathan Evans
Client: Lend Lease
Contractor: Lend Lease
Photographers: Ben Guthrie, John Gollings

International House, Sydney is a seven-story (above ground) fully engineered timber commercial building, currently the tallest of its type in the world.
The location of International House is at the major entry point of a new harbourside commercial/retail precinct in Sydney named Barangaroo.

We see the architecture of International House, Sydney as an exemplar of a new form of beauty – one that speaks to deep design and innovation for a lower carbon urban future.
New also because it is more than surface and shape, expressing with exactitude the scientific properties of the materials, structure and energy mitigation elements of the façade.

Finally, it reflects a new working environment that is clean and direct, more warehouse than corporate in character, even though Barangaroo is at the heart of Sydney’s new financial district.

The decision by Lend Lease to place this innovative, lower carbon architecture on this prominent commercial city location provides greater opportunity for public engagement with issues about the delivery of lower carbon urban futures including changing the character of urban and workplace environments. International House, Sydney clearly expresses its function, form, time and place.

The form reinforces the street and block pattern of Barangaroo including the provision of enclosure over a pedestrian route and a colonnade flanked by pedestrian bridges at each end and formed from recycled iron bark logs originating from the wharf structures demolished near the site.

Timber is explored in all its forms to add delight to the experience of the public realm. The transfer of upper level structural load fully engineered in CLT wrapped in glass to the recycled iron bark colonnade, capable of very long term performance when exposed to the weather, is directly expressed as the architecture.

Compared to an equivalent concrete framed building International House delivers a 60% reduction in carbon emissions during construction and within a 30-year modelling period. This is equivalent to the reduction of emissions from 300 cars using oil/petrol based fuels per annum.

Construction was undertaken by a total of 8 people, 3 of whom were in management roles. During construction, the site was clean, with low noise levels and only the sweet smell of CLT emanated from the structure.

The builders reported going home after a days work feeling well and relaxed on this site when compared to conventional construction with the effects of highly toxic dust and emissions of concrete.

The use of timber delivers a spatial and sensorial interior experience that is far more desirable as a work place environment than conventional materials. Services are neatly arranged and exposed (painted black against the blond CLT soffits) to allow ease of maintenance and retrofits further reducing carbon waste from interior changes over time.

International House, Sydney is transparent in every respect – it shows how it is made, how carbon is reduced and provides a casual working area that connects inside with the public domain it forms.

The architecture reflects the values that underpin our design approach as a practice, combining a commitment to architecture as a city making proposition, and to use scientific rigour and building physics to advance lower carbon design propositions, as our contribution to a more sustainable future for the planet.