Location / Trickett Street, Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
Client / Forise Holdings
DBI Role / Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Design, Master Planning
Commencement Date / January 2015
Completion Date / December 2020
Site Area / 2,492m2
GFA / 184,200m2
Project Value / AUD $1.1 BN
Project Height / 89 storeys
The Spirit development will be an iconic tower overlooking the ocean from the heart of Surfers Paradise. It will rise 89 storeys making it one of Australia’s tallest luxury residential buildings. It will deliver 479 luxury apartments, three separate recreation decks, three podium levels of high-end retail and a variety of fine dining restaurants.
Spirit by virtue of its scale will inevitably become a landmark for Surfers Paradise. The building enthusiastically embraces its landmark role expressing the vital importance of the cooling coastal breezes.
Developed from a rigorous urban design analysis, the building’s podium is a direct extrapolation from the context responding to the urban rectilinear condition to the north and gently flowing to the park on the south.
Spirit is sensitive and contextual while fulfilling its role as a signifier of the precinct.
Slab edges are gently profiled to achieve the sculpted architectural effect. The tower itself gracefully settles into the landscape at its base. The base is designed in two halves, to the south, the towers curved form flows down gradually to the street visually connecting with the adjacent Laws and Hamilton Park. At the north, the tower base is an articulated ‘cubist’, interlocking floor plates that at once increase their amenity and usability, and reinforce the design concept of these spaces representing ‘rock forms’ or striations, over which the waves of the tower are breaking. The mullions to the tower base are composed in a dramatic ‘explosive’ composition. The physical phenomenon of wave interference patterns has been the generative notion for the composition of the glazing. This ‘cubist’ form is seen as something explosive and exciting from the street, defining the northern half of the site as a place of excitement and captivation, as it reaches towards the city’s most significant urban to ocean interface.