New South Wales
Campbell House Private Office is the adaptive reuse of a Federation style house from the early 1890s into a contemporary office. TZG’s approach to this design was to weave the built heritage fabric into the contemporary commercial design to unify the significant building and positively contribute to its Heritage Conservation setting.
The threshold between interior and exterior spaces is blurred by layered transparencies that welcome the established front garden and abundant natural light deep into the building. A mature Weeping Fig Tree was planted in the office atrium and is the central focus of the new building. The surrounding contemporary design interventions, like the tree, breathes new life into the building.
The office is an exemplar of environmental design based on natural light, passive ventilation, enduring materials and harvesting green energy facilitated by a contemporary intervention to a heritage building.
The David Oppenheim Award for Sustainable Architecture
With Campbell House Private Office, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer has extended and adapted a grand heritage house into a fresh, comfortable and functional office space with excellent sustainability credentials – including the concept of ‘new energy from old buildings’.
A superstructure of “solar blades” supports an extensive array of photovoltaic panels above a central glass atrium roof – lighting all of the indoor spaces and turning what could have been a clunky overhead frame into an intriguing and appealing horizontal shade structure. This array produces significant battery-stored energy for the building and its fleet of electric vehicles.
The building has conditioned office and meeting spaces around the perimeter, and a naturally-ventilated gathering space with associated break-out areas in the centre. The jury visited on a very cold day and found the central space bright and warm, and the building suffused with a sense of calm industriousness. The most striking feature of the interior is the indoor tree – a weeping fig that has evidently taken to its new environment with great enthusiasm. In addition to the recognised air cleaning benefits of vegetation, the tree provides a visual and symbolic focal point in the centre of a new multi-purpose ground floor gathering space, where diverse staff of the diverse business activities within the building can collect for events and functions.
The juxtaposition is intriguing: an office replete with high-tech active environmental systems, partially housed in an 1890s heritage house, also harbours one of the most ancient, living, passive shading organisms known to the world. The integration of these layers of history and technology illustrates the skill of the designers. Equally, the space is not without moments of sumptuousness – the traditional sash window set into a wall of clear glass bricks; the stainless-steel mesh curtain shrouding the sweeping curved glass of the front stairwell.
As a building that carefully pursues sustainability objectives through the reuse of existing fabric and materials, energy generation, water management, landscaping and natural ventilation, the project is also an exemplar of design inventiveness and rich spatial quality in a fully integrated whole.
National Commendation for Commercial Architecture
This building offers a sophisticated office typology while ensuring the continued lineage of a significant Federation-era heritage building. The new architecture honours the heritage building with exquisite and bold intervention.
New additions – a glass entry encasement and a rear town-square courtyard – skilfully provide modernist amenity to the original building diagram. These manoeuvres enable a highly contemporary and flexible work environment, appropriate for the enlightened client’s needs.
A mature fig tree sitting on an unroofed space centres the building’s floor plan, which provides passive ventilation to the lower public areas. Photovoltaic cells over the tree provide shade to the central court.
The architects’ intervention creates an appropriately progressive space that facilitates divergent work experiences: public town hall space, private meeting space, team social space and collaborative space.
This work displays extraordinary architectural skill in producing refined elegance, high-tech sustainability and a progressive workplace environment in a dignified heritage building.
The Sir Arthur G Stephenson Award for Commercial Architecture
The Campbell House Private Office sets an intriguing precedent for the future of commercial design. This small building points to a larger framework relevant to the wider future of commercial architecture: a need for the typology to be adaptive, environmentally responsible, and communal.
Through adaptive reuse and sustainable practices, the building marries historical preservation with forward-thinking design. Transforming a Federation-style house into a multi-tenanted contemporary office space, the project blends commercial imperatives with a communal, collective attitude.
A central ‘town hall’ gathering space fosters collaboration and sustainability, integrating convincingly with the heritage structure, and improving the experience of the original building. A triple-height glazed roof, adorned with solar blades, creates a luminous atrium while harnessing solar energy. The design diffuses the lines between interior and exterior, inviting nature and daylight deep into the building. Notably, the inclusion of a mature Weeping Fig Tree within the building serves as a central focal point which the offices clustered around and above it. Symbolising the continuing life and evolution of the project, it will improve with age.
Campbell House Private Office exemplifies the symbiosis of heritage preservation, sustainable innovation, and contemporary functionality, earning acclaim for insight and excellence in commercial architecture.
Award for Sustainable Architecture
Campbell House Private Office is a deft transformation of a significant, yet poor performing, manor house into an open, light, and airy workplace accommodating diverse client enterprises.
The primary intervention is the central naturally ventilated atrium arranged between conditioned work zones in the retained fabric, above which a horizontal brise soleil integrates an array of photo voltaic panels and collects rainwater. The solar panels deliver renewable energy for the buildings operation and two batteries provide power storage for nighttime functions. Within the central atrium, a Weeping Fig is thriving, planted in the natural ground and giving dappled light to the shared gathering and breakout spaces.
The generosity of natural light and consistency of the material palette are an achievement considering the extent of heritage fabric retained. Campbell House Private House provides a delightful work environment with a clear sustainability focus on its design and operation.
Commendation for Interior Architecture
Campbell House Private Office exemplifies creative reuse, where new fabric is strategically stitched in to rationalise the existing building, resulting in a new cohesive internal office space.
The internal courtyard connects with the surrounding spaces, blurring the interior and exterior. The use of deep steel frames and curved glass as new internal facades encloses offices and meeting rooms and successfully juxtaposes the original brick fabric.
The use of mirrors is particularly outstanding, strategically employed to reference the building’s original features, negotiating varying floor heights and celebrating the original roofline.
Campbell House Private Office exceeds the brief we provided to TZG. It was our requirement that the life of this historical building was extended to our contemporary needs and that it proactively addressed sustainability within the built environment. We are so pleased with the performance of the solar panels so far and have found the passive cooling and ventilation effective throughout this summer. The tree at the centre of the office improves the quality of our workday, refocuses our corporate goals and maintains a fresh atmosphere.
The Australian Institute of Architects acknowledges First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia.
We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive.
We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.
