Sunken Garden · One Central Park
Sydney, Australia
© Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Paris, France
ONE CENTRAL PARK – SEVEN GARDENS
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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.
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SUNKEN GARDEN
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The path from the public park into the atrium of One Central Park’s towers leads through a sunken garden that follows an escalator upwards on a slope and is lit through a large ponded skylight. Sunlight is redirected in real time from heliostats on the lower tower to a faceted giant reflector that cantilevers off the taller tower to shine through the skylight onto the plants of the sunken garden. The water on the glass roof works as a heat sink in the summer. The sunken garden is then lit in a softly moving dappled light because the airflow between the towers keeps the skylight pond animated. In the winter, the water can be drained to let in more warmth, and the light changes to a more defined composition of shadows and highlights.
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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.
