Architect and Builder December 2019 | Page 33

Gardens and Landscaping The design sits the building wings back from Pybus Street to create a generous garden in which to linger and spill out as an unaffected foreground to the architecture. The use of a few of the parking levels to lift the building’s ground floor above the street around in a landscaped podium, creates natural privacy and security, while affording the building users wonderful views from the public spaces. The glazed street level lobby ensures the building is not removed from its city context. The natural landscape complements the entrance, and the variety of swathes of indigenous planting, lawn, integral seating spaces and raised planters create a diversity of places for sitting out and taking lunch, or breaking from meetings. The orientation and the detailed landscape design together with the glazed edge balustrade ensures that there is always a choice of sunny, shady, and wind-free spaces with views to enjoy. The folding stacking doors at the coffee shop are regularly opened completely allowing the transition between inside and outside spaces to blur and seamlessly function together. On higher levels, terraces on each corner of the floorplate open to the outside, linking the office environment to the natural context. The same level of attention was brought to the streetscape, where a regular beat of trees are set into densely planted beds which make the walk along the building at street level pleasant and verdant. The podium façade is dressed with a combination of stone and planted screens which increase the garden area, and speak to the similar detail at 90 Rivonia. 2 Pybus Sustainability 2 Pybus has achieved a 4-star GBCSA Green Star rating. A combination of sensible passive design principles and selected active technologies have been used to minimise the impact of the building and its on-going use on the environment, as well as to enhance the experience of working in and visiting the building. One of the more unusual aspects of the scheme was the focus on individuality necessitated by the particular working style of the tenants – as a result, not only are individual thermostats and lights provided, but so are openable windows. 33