ABN Amro Tower (Aurora Place)
General
Address	Corner of Macquarie & Bent Streets
Locale	Central Business District City of Sydney The City of Sydney is the Local Government Area covering the Sydney central business district and surrounding inner city suburbs of the greater metropolitan area of Sydney, Australia... , Sydney Sydney Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
Status	Built
Use	Office
Begun	1997
Completed	2000
Structure
Façade	Glass curtain wall
	Architectural Style
Statistics
Roof	188.8 m (479 feet)
Pinnacle/Spire	219 m (718 feet)
Antenna	n/a
Highest occupied floor	tba
Floors	41
Floor Area	123 m
Floor to floor
Companies
Architects	Renzo Piano Building Workshop Renzo Piano Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize... in association with Innovarchi Architects, Sydney and Lend Lease Design Group (TSG)
Developers	Bovis Lend Lease Lend Lease Corporation Lend Lease Group is a global property and infrastructure company headquartered in Sydney, Australia... East Asia Property Group Mirvac Group (Residential only)
Project Manager	Bovis Lend Lease Lend Lease Corporation Lend Lease Group is a global property and infrastructure company headquartered in Sydney, Australia...
Owners
Structural Engineers	Lend Lease Design Group, Ove Arup and Partners Taylor, Thompson & Whitting
other

Aurora Place is the common name of Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...

's award-winning office tower and residential block on Macquarie Street in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Its official name is the RBS Tower building. The 41-storey structure is 218 m high to the top of the spire and 188 m to the roof.

The building has an unusual geometric shape where not one panel is parallel to any grid. The east façade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

 bulges out slightly from its base, reaching its maximum width at the top floors. The curved and twisted shape of east façade is aimed to correspond spatially with Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...

 and to represent the sublime marine environment of the harbour. The exterior glass curtain-wall extends beyond the main frame, creating an illusion of its independence. The steel spire attached to the north facade is 75 m in length.

History

The building was built on the site of the former NSW Government Office Block by Bovis Lend Lease

Lend Lease Corporation

Lend Lease Group is a global property and infrastructure company headquartered in Sydney, Australia...

. The assumptions of a planned tower were first presented to the Central Sydney Planning Committee in 1996, when three main architects: Mark Carroll, Shunji Ishida and Renzo Piano put forward the innovative project. The building was sold in January 2001 for $485 million. Aurora Place was the winner of prestigious 2002 Property Council of Australia Rider Hunt Award, handled out for technical and financial qualities. On 2 June 2009, French urban climber Alain Roberts scaled this building in protest against climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

.

Construction materials

Materials that are used for this building were unique compared to its neighbours, Chifley Tower [Kohn, Pederson Fox architects, 1988] and Governor Phillip Tower [Denton, Corker Marshall architects, 1994]. The façade which makes up the primary component of the building is the milky white fritted glass which has been laminated. The aesthetics of the material gives a visual metaphor of a sail. It is inspired by the tiling of the Sydney Opera House, which is less than half a mile to the north. Terracotta tiles makes up much of the lower section of the building to contrast the white dominated glass cladding. It also reconciles the orange-clad lobby and the residential complex.

Tenants

An associate of Mulpha Australia - a property owning company that owns the private exclusive Hayman Island in the Great Barrier Reef and the nearby Intercontinental Sydney, lives in an unknown apartment in Aurora Place.

See also

• Skyscrapers in Sydney
• List of tallest buildings in Australia
• SAW, Architect led tours of Aurora Place