Modern Makeover for Iconic Heritage Building
Location
Sydney, Australia
Sector
Year Completed
Current
Client
Architect
Project Managers
Builder
Sustainability Targets
5.5 Star NABERS Energy, 6 Star Green Star Office Design, and WELL Platinum Rating
The redevelopment of Sydney’s former David Jones building has converted an iconic piece of Sydney’s history into an impressive mixed-use development. The project features an additional 22-storey tower with 98 luxury residential apartments, alongside a transformed heritage podium offering 11,500m2 of modern workspaces and an extension to Westfield Sydney’s luxury retail offering.
Advanced Structural Fire Analysis
The Holmes’ team of structural fire engineers undertook structural fire analyses to enable the existing heritage structural system to accommodate the additional tower on top. This analysis was to understand the holistic behaviour of the whole structural frame under severe fire exposure, and to investigate if the existing building structure could support the new structure.
Our analysis showed that despite its age and the non-compliant concrete covers, the existing structural frame could maintain structural stability under exposure to severe fully developed post-flashover fires. The resulting analysis also provided quantification of the structural behaviour of the building in the event of a severe fire. The results revealed that the required Fire Resistance Levels (FRLs) for some of the new and existing structural members could be reduced from a 120-minute FRL to a 90-minute FRL. This provides significant cost savings for the client while preserving safety and structural integrity.
Exploring Sustainability and Carbon Reduction
Internally, our team wanted to complete further investigations to understand the impact of the reduced FRL’s, resulting from the SFE analysis and if there was a sustainability benefit as a result. It is well understood that adaptive reuse projects provide a sustainable option for redeveloping our urban centres, however with these projects comes complications to comply with current building codes. Understanding the structural fire engineering value of these projects is limited therefore our team conducted a study to calculate the reduction in carbon that was applied to the structure as a result of the structural fire design. Interestingly, these results had quite an impact!
Structural Fire Design: Fire Protection Savings
| DTS design | Holmes SFE design | Total Saved | |
| Cafco 300 weight | 71,541kg | 6,435kg | 65,106kg |
| Embodied carbon | 40,564kg CO2 eq / kg | 3,649kg CO2 eq / kg | 36,915kg CO2 eq / kg |
| 91% reduction in carbon | |||
