Darling Quarter is a true integration of urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture toward the creation of a public place within the City. Darling Quarter is where the western edge of Sydney City and Tumbelong Park meet and is celebrated in a series of defined public spaces, including a pedestrian boulevard, parklands, gateway, children’s playground, and activated edges lined with cafes and restaurants.

Commonwealth Bank Place is a very different type of office building in this very special location. It is an architecture of human scale, natural materials and of a warmth of character appropriate to the public parkland location. The long gently curving facade defines and enhances the public realm with a warmth and transparency unusual in any commercial building. The mullions are made of natural timber and irregularly spaced like rows of trees in a forest. Between these deep, profiled posts are adjustable timber louvres that control heat and glare automatically adjusted in relation to the position of the sun.

Internally, long forms of timber and glass, capped by the gentle curves and the scalloped apertures of the roof, create a background to the parkland and a foreground to the rising city beyond, uniting the two in a new public place, Darling Quarter.

Above the restaurants, cafes, bars and promenade are the work environments of the building, centred around day-lit atriums. Lobbies and escalators bring visitors and workers to the dramatic floor of these atriums. The asymmetry of the workplace floors and atriums, edged with stairs, bridges, breakout areas and glazed lifts creates a stimulating and collaborative campus environment.