Perth's Brookfield Place named Urban Taskforce development of the year
Brookfield Place in Perth has been named development of the year as part of the Urban Taskforce Australia's Development Excellence Awards.
The building (pictured below) currently occupied by BHP Billiton and developed by Brookfield, was noted for reinvigorating surrounding spaces and its sustainability rating.
“It is an elegant addition to Perth’s skyline. It has restored heritage buildings at street level and created a series of bustling urban spaces. It innovates in providing flexible working spaces for high quality tenants. It achieves a 5 star Green Star rating and has 86,000 square metres fully let making the project a commercial success,” said NSW government architect and jury chair, Peter Poulet.
The Eclipse Tower in Parramatta by Leighton Properties with Grosvenor Australia received the commercial development award.
“Eclipse is a demonstration of the importance of delivering jobs to Western Sydney and to Parramatta,” commented Poulet.
“Leighton [Properties] has developed a top quality 19 level office building that came through the Global Financial Crisis with full financing and has now been sold at a Parramatta record value to Retail Employees Superannuation Trust. The commitment of the developer to driving design quality as well as commercial outcomes for a commercial office building has added great confidence to Parramatta as a location for more buildings like this.”
The residential development award went to 74 level residential tower, Soleil (pictured below), in Brisbane’s city centre developed by Meriton.
“Soleil demonstrates that very tall residential towers can be well designed and be commercially successful,” said Poulet.
The innovative development award was given to apartment building Forte, at Melbourne’s Victoria Harbour developed by international property and infrastructure group, Lend Lease.
Deemed as the world’s tallest timber apartment building at 10 storey’s, Forte (pictured below) uses Cross Laminted Timber construction and is considered to be the world leader in this application.
“The use of timber has excellent sustainability qualities and reduced construction time considerably as the laminated timber panels are made in a factory and assembled on site. To manage commercial risk sales only occurred when the building was completed and it is now fully occupied,” adds Poulet.
Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson said this year’s Development Excellence Awards demonstrated that the development industry is being effective in lifting Australia’s prosperity.
“Developers are part of the service industry providing products that communities need at prices they can afford,” Johnson said.
