Bright day, from Broadway: both towers with balconies, green walls and the cantilever overhead, retail podium and buses in front. A low view with converging verticals.

One Central Park

28 Broadway, Chippendale

Ateliers Jean Nouvel with PTW Architects; green walls by Patrick Blanc. 2010 to 2014. Contemporary.

Size
East tower 116 m and west tower 64.5 m on the architects’ list, though their text and the builder say 130 m. 34 storeys, and 12 or 16. Width estimated from photographs
Material
Glass, steel, hydroponic walls and planter boxes on about half of the facade
Status
Apartments above a shopping centre

The towers stand on the old brewery site beside Central Station, which grew over nearly two centuries to about 14 acres and came up for sale in 2003. Its redevelopment was contested over height and density. One Central Park was the first building completed there: two towers with 623 apartments on a shared retail podium.

Patrick Blanc worked with the architects on the planting. There are 23 green walls of about 1,200 m² on Wikipedia’s count, with hydroponic panels, planter boxes and cables for climbing plants, covering about half the facade. Plant counts vary widely: Architectural Record reported 38,000 and Wikipedia gives about 85,000.

The cantilever near the top of the east tower extends 42 m in one 2012 report and 148 feet, about 45 m, in Architectural Record. Mirrors on the west tower’s roof track the sun and send the light up to fixed panels beneath the cantilever, which turn it down into the park. Sources give 220 or 320 fixed panels. At night Yann Kersalé’s lighting turns the array into a display. In 2014 the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named the project the best tall building in the world.

Sources

  1. One Central Park, Wikipedia
  2. One Central Park, Ateliers Jean Nouvel
  3. One Central Park, Architectural Record
  4. Work begins on Australia's largest cantilever on One Central Park tower, Apartments.com.au
  5. One Central Park, BESIX