Sydney Hilton

A Major Transformation

Location
Sydney, Australia
Status
Completed 2005
Client
Hilton
Type
Hotel

This major transformation project has restablished Hilton’s presence within the city of Sydney. The grand sunfilled public spaces and links to the Town Hall and QVB, contribute to civic life in the core of the city. The hotel contains uncompromised amenities and conference centre facilities which set a new standard for the region. The existing guestrooms and commercial office facilities are greatly enhanced to meet market expectations.

JPW have taken one of the worst horrors of 1970s Sydney and transformed it into a stylish, urbane and accessible part of the city. We need many more such sophisticated works of thoughtful urban architecture.

Philip Thalis
Sydney Morning Herald

The main lobby is a dramatic, twenty-metre-high space set within the columns of the tower and flooded on both sides with light from glass skylights and a south-facing all-glass wall. Beyond the reception desk, stairs and escalators rise in a sequence of landings, overlooks and bridges to the upper-level restaurants, bars and 4,000 square metres, of flexible convention facilities.

Professor James Weirick
Director of the Master of Urban Development and Design program at the University of New South Wales,
Architecture Australia
Jan 2006

Most architects who can do the clear, simple diagram can’t do on-the-ground warmth; while most who can do the warm, fuzzy thing with space and material can’t pick the underlying analysis clean in the first place. Here, JPW do both: a crystalline diagram and a fleshing-out that is at once grand and intimate. This is how modernism should be; should always have been: clean but not puritanical, clear but embracing, ennobling but intricate.’

Elizabeth Farrelly
Architecture Critic
Sydney Morning Herald

On George Street, an inflected array of elliptical columns, clad in sandstone and polished granite, turn along the facade in reference to the multiple rhythm of reeded columns on the sandstone facade of the Queen Victoria Building, and the polished trachyte sentinels at its entryway.

Professor James Weirick
Director of the Master of Urban Development and Design program at the University of New South Wales, Architecture Australia
Jan 2006

This project re-engages the public spaces of the Hilton Hotel with the public spaces of the city. The transparent treatment of the new George Street facade creates an active, vital edge and opens views to the sandstone elevation of the Queen Victoria Building opposite. Materials in the new podium reinforce this connection.

Urban Design Jury Citation
AIA NSW Awards, 2006

2006
National Award for Commercial Architecture,
AIA National Architecture Awards
Award for Commercial Architecture and Urban Design AIA NSW Architecture Awards
Premier Award, Best Commercial Exterior and
Best Commercial Interior
Australian Stone Architectural Awards
Energy Efficiency Award
Sustainable Energy Authority (SEDA)

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JPW acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country and honours their continuing connection to lands, waters, skies and communities.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging – as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work; and the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation on whose land our Studio is located.