Sky Garden · One Central Park
Sydney, Australia
© Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Paris, France
ONE CENTRAL PARK – SEVEN GARDENS
​
One Central Park’s public spaces are organized as a collection of seven gardens that are treated like individual installations, each with its own distinct theme. Like the planted plateaus rising along the South facades of the towers, the seven gardens extend the presence of the public park into semi-private spaces. They fulfill the same functional and symbolic purpose of staging encounters with nature but do so in more intimate and immersive settings.
​
SKY GARDEN
​
The cantilevering Sky Garden takes advantage of the structural trusses needed to support a giant faceted reflector that allows redirecting sunlight into the park and atrium. From afar, the sky garden and reflector form a recognizable silhouette and the most intriguing feature of the project.
​
The floor slab of the Sky Garden is cantilevered far off the tower for privacy and better light in the adjacent tower apartments. It is a perilously hovering place that can only be reached via a bridge of red colored glass. Since the sky garden faces due West, it is inherently a perfect observatory for sunsets over the city. The red glass of the bridge refers to the hour of the day when the sky turns red and amplifies this moment in real time as the colors of the firmament change. A group of Illawarra Flame Trees borders the edge of the garden. These native trees from the East Coast of Australia bloom once a year in late spring with fiery red bell-shaped flowers while their dark branches are still without leaves. The sky, the bridge, and the trees all show their red at different moments in time but relate to each other in our memory of the place.
​
For residents of the tower, the sky garden is an outdoor retreat with all the attributes of an inhabitable indoor space. Weather allowing, one can lounge, nap, bathe, grill and have large gatherings and dinners there as if this was the shaded viewing terrace of a country home in the middle of the city.
​
Bertram Beissel was the design director and partner in charge of One Central Park for Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Under Bertram’s direction, One Central Park in Sydney, Australia, won the CTBUH Award for the Best Tall Building Worldwide in 2014.
​
