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1 Spring Street
Shell House
Building
Completed
1988
Office
All-Concrete
132 m / 433 ft
32
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Construction Start
Completed
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Usually involved in the front end design, with a "typical" condition being that of a leadership role through either Schematic Design or Design Development, and then a monitoring role through the CD and CA phases.
The main contractor is the supervisory contractor of all construction work on a project, management of sub-contractors and vendors, etc. May be referred to as "Construction Manager," however, for consistency CTBUH uses the term "Main Contractor" exclusively.
Originally known as Shell House, 1 Spring Street was erected as the third headquarters for the Shell Company of Australia Ltd and replaced the earlier headquarters buildings constructed in 1933 and 1958 and remained occupied by Shell until 2004. Located on an L-shaped site at the southeastern corner of the central Melbourne city grid, the curved façade turns the corner of the block, creating a bookend for the urban street wall facing the Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens at the edge of the traditional central business district, while maximizing views to the south and east. 1 Spring Street is the only completed high-rise project by Australian modernist architect Harry Seidler within the State of Victoria and was composed of simple geometry, typical of late twentieth century office towers with an emphasis on expressing the structure of the reinforced concrete building.
The main entrance of the building is located on a public plaza and is demarcated with a sculptural building pier facing the intersection of Spring and Flinders Streets. The office tower was constructed with repetitive floors utilizing a system of clear span beams of equal length; maintaining a 15 meter wide column free span from the perimeter wall to the internal building core. The top two office floors were designed as executive suites with terrace gardens positioned at two upper level setbacks. The façade is composed of concrete sheer walls to the north and west while windows were primarily positioned to the southeast and flanked by anti-glare aluminum shades to reduce solar heat gain. These passive sustainable design features were also supplemented by daylight sensors and motion detectors to activate interior lighting, and were innovative for their time.
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