Riverside Centre, Brisbane
Riverside Centre is a heritage-listed office building at 123 Eagle Street, Brisbane CBD, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Harry Seidler, and was built in 1986. Completed in 1986, it contains 40 storeys and rises above ground. The building is owned by General Property Trust. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 1 December 2023.
The base of the building fronts the Brisbane River with a CityCat wharf, has many cafes and restaurants. The Riverwalk, which links the central business district to suburbs both up and down the Brisbane river was built between the water and the public space surrounding the skyscraper.
The open plaza and steps at the tower base is a recommended viewing point for the Riverfire celebrations. It formerly held the Brisbane Stock exchange. Norman Carlberg was the sculptor who collaborated with Seidler on works for the Riverside project.
The site was initially a cemetery. It was later occupied by low level buildings attached to wharves.
Riparian Plaza, the second major building in Brisbane designed by Seidler, was completed in 2005 and is located near the Riverside Centre. One One One Eagle Street is located between the two buildings.
History
Completed in 1986, Riverside Centre was designed as development company Lend Lease's principal project for the 1980s. It was built during a boom in office tower construction in Brisbane, including the emerging heart of the financial district between Queen and Edward streets. Designed by internationally renowned architect Harry Seidler in 1983, the $200-plus million development included a 40-storey office tower, a plaza providing open-air public space with access to the Brisbane River, and entertainment, food and transport facilities. Riverside Centre became home of the Brisbane Stock Exchange, with a purpose-built bourse on the lower office levels. It also became a popular centre for recreation, as Brisbane's social focus was increasingly oriented towards the outdoors and the river.Growth of the Brisbane Central Business District
Part of the traditional lands of the Turrbal and Yuggerah people, the colonial occupation of Brisbane began with the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, before the area was opened for free settlement in 1842. Established on the site of the former penal colony, Brisbane then was encircled by two reaches of the Brisbane River, and was declared a port of entry in 1846. It became the capital of the colony of Queensland in 1859, and was proclaimed a city in 1902.The expansion of the colonial economy and related shipping activity from the 1840s shaped the need for buildings in Brisbane to house office-based work, banking, and insurance. Brisbane developed as Queensland's commercial and financial centre and its major port, hosting the headquarters for the colony's principal businesses, financial institutions, shipping companies and government. Its buildings were erected largely in economic boom periods in the central business district in the 1860s, the 1880s and the 1920s. These were clustered into precincts, with most of the government buildings erected along George Street, the retail and financial district stretching down Queen Street, and a shipping, wharf, and warehouse precinct along the Town Reach, the riverfront between the Botanic Gardens and the Kangaroo Point bend. Surviving wharf and warehouse buildings in this precinct include AUSN House , the Port Office, the Brisbane Customs House, Naval Offices, and Smellie & Co's warehouses.
In the early 1920s, most of the Brisbane CBD's buildings reached only one or two storeys, with warehouses up to three and four storeys, and a small number of commercial buildings extending up to eight storeys. The 1920s boom brought taller buildings, but in 1926, building heights were restricted to a maximum of, or eleven storeys. The maximum height could only be achieved for buildings of fireproof construction, in streets wider than ; otherwise lower limits applied. Churches, chapels, ornamental towers, domes, and decorative architectural features could exceed that limit. Accordingly, financial buildings along Queen Street were erected up to ten storeys during the 1920s and 1930s, but most of the CBD's buildings were lower, including the six-storey Finney Isles store, seven-storey National Mutual Life Association Building, seven-storey National Bank of Australasia, and ten-storey Colonial Mutual Life Building. By the time construction work was halted for the outbreak of World War II, the Brisbane City Hall clock tower was the tallest structure in the CBD, being high.
The rise of the office tower
The second half of the twentieth century brought considerable change to the Brisbane CBD. Brisbane's population climbed to half a million in the late 1940s, overtaking Adelaide as Australia's third largest city. The CBD's first postwar office building, an eleven-storey curtain wall modern office block for MLC, was completed in 1956, though a credit squeeze limited further construction for the next several years. Between 1950 and 1965 few office highrise buildings were constructed in Brisbane. These included: Mutual Life & Citizens Insurance Building, the first curtain-wall high-rise building in Queensland, Friendly Society Building, and Taxation Building. These all stood below the height limit. Shopping centres were built in the suburbs and shipping facilities moved further downstream towards the river mouth, leaving the CBD's traditional retail and wharfing precincts in decline. The shift of the wharves occurred in port cities worldwide in the second half of the twentieth century, as small inner-city wharves could no longer accommodate larger ships nor containerisation facilities. In Brisbane, additionally, the Kangaroo Point bend was too difficult for large ships to handle. Port facilities were relocated downstream from the 1940s, and ultimately the Port of Brisbane was built near the mouth of the river. However, Queensland's mining and property industries boomed in the 1960s and 1980s, encouraging investment into the state. This, accompanied by governmental encouragement of private enterprise, favourable development policies and the removal of building height restrictions under Brisbane's first Town Plan in 1965, increased business in Brisbane's CBD. High-rise offices were constructed across the CBD to meet demand from Queensland's growing tertiary industries, particularly finance ; government; and to serve as state headquarters for Queensland's agricultural, pastoral and mining companies. This private development was accompanied by a city-wide council-led program to modernise Brisbane, by providing or upgrading public facilities, roads, sewerage systems, and undertaking beautification projects:The high-rise office tower emerged as a building typology during the late 19th century in Chicago and New York in the United States of America, where architects and engineers manipulated the metal frame, electric lift, and air-conditioning systems to establish tall buildings for work spaces. During the mid-to-late 20th century this building type was increasingly constructed in Australian cities and continuously evolved with the established building tradition. While there are numerous descriptions of the height associated with the term "high-rise" worldwide, it is most often based on building codes and fire regulation applicable in individual geographical locations. With the removal of height limits in the 1965 town plan, Brisbane's high-rises rose above 132 ft.
High-rise office towers from the late 20th century typically featured a structural frame of metal, reinforced concrete or pre-stressed concrete; repeated floor plates with spaces for desk work; entrance foyers for centralised access; and vertical cores that usually assisted in withstanding lateral forces such as wind and included: lifts, stairs, toilets and service ducts. Most buildings of this type adopted the "shell and core" concept, where the exterior design of the building was highly specified, and the interior spaces were standardised and flexible, allowing for tenant-specified individual fit-outs and periodic refitting. Semi-public spaces that were at the forefront of user-experience, such as entrance foyers, lifts, boardrooms and restaurants, were often of a more refined architectural finish. During the 1960s and 1970s, heavy concrete curtain wall cladding was popular, and from the late 1970s, building designs increasingly featured flat, sleek and reflective surfaces, including all-glass facades or polished marble or granite. The curtain wall cladding was often modular and prefabricated. Sun control was handled in various and evolving ways, such as structural frame projections, external shading devices, reflective glass, or interior blinds.
Between 90 and 100 high-rise offices were constructed in the Brisbane CBD between 1965 and 2000, with more in near-city suburbs. The first building to claim a height over eleven storeys, the 16-storey Pearl Assurance office, was completed in 1966. The next several years brought a series of ever-taller buildings, from the 20-storey Manufacturers Mutual Insurance Building ; to the 23-storey Bank of New South Wales ; the State Government Insurance Office ; the first building over, 167 Eagle Street ; and a series of high-rise towers for government, mining, investment, financial and insurance groups completed by 1976, mostly designed in the "international modern" style which dominated high-rise office design in Australia. As at 1995, 80 percent of Brisbane's office space was constructed after 1970. The most intense growth in the CBD occurred in a five year period in the mid-1980s, when development underpinned by a resources boom triggered extensive office building construction. Almost of floorspace was constructed in Brisbane during this time, significantly reshaping the city's appearance. Sydney and Melbourne had also experienced high-rise office growth, but, according to a 1985 commentator, "The boom in Sydney had to stop earlier because they simply ran out of space, and in Melbourne the boom just wasn't as strong. Brisbane was really it - the boom was extraordinarily strong and it went without any hitches".
The former wharf and warehouse precinct along Town Reach was a focus for high-rise office development. It held the city's first high-rise and two of the tallest buildings, as well as several more modest high-rise offices. The construction of the city's first fully glass-clad "Gold Tower" for AMP in 1978 gave rise to the precinct being called the "Golden Triangle", and its reputation as a desirable office location. Office towers were erected in the Golden Triangle and named for the highest-paying lessee, ranging in scale from the 18-storey, $9 million GWA House on Market Street, to the record-setting $60 million AMP Blue Tower, a 35-storey "technologically-advanced marvel". Other towers erected in the Golden Triangle included the City Mutual Life building, Charlotte Tower, GWA House, Société General House, Bank of Queensland Centre, Bank of New Zealand, and 200 Mary Street. The Golden Triangle became the CBD's acknowledged financial heart as the precinct became home to a series of "gleaming office towers". This development was described as:
"Since the "82 Games high rise development has stretched up along the banks of the river, great canyons of steel, concrete and glass. Modern buildings that reflect the gold of the early morning sun."The 1980s also saw the emergence of office towers described in real estate parlance as "blue chip", "premium" or "prime", responding to demands from the financial and professional sectors. No objective rating system of building classifications existed at the time. The Building Owners and Managers Association and Property Council of Australia's Office Quality Grade Matrix was developed in the early 1980s to aggregate vacancy statistics rather than as a building ratings tool, though it was used as such. Guidelines for office building quality were not developed until 2006. In the interim, the real estate market used subjective terms of prime, premium, A-grade etc. Notable amongst these were the Gold Tower, its twin "Blue Tower", the CML building on Queen Street, Capital Centre on Adelaide Street, Central Plaza One and Two, and Waterfront Place. These ratings led to some tenants seeking to upgrade away from buildings perceived to be lower grade. A Jones Lang Wootton survey in October 1985 identified Santos House, Comalco Place , and the Colonial Mutual building as "prime", with the forthcoming Riverside Centre and Central Plaza One also to fit into that category. In January 1987, when JLW's associate national director said that "contrary to popular belief, there is not an abundance of prime new office space available". In a single decade, Brisbane climbed from one of the least expensive cities for office rentals in the world, to 15th in the world for premium office buildings, and 24th in the world for office rentals overall. Brisbane had not been surveyed in the 1979 commercial property report, but its rents were on par with the second-lowest tier of cities which had been included in the report, with only one city commanding lower commercial rents. In the same decade Sydney experienced relatively little change, dropping from the fifth most expensive city in the world for commercial rents in 1979, to seventh most expensive city in 1988, and climbing to the sixth most expensive city in 1989.
The long boom of Brisbane's office towers ended abruptly in 1990. Projects were put on hold as the Queensland economy began a downward turn, and Australia entered a recession. Several proposed major office towers projects were postponed or abandoned. Strong building activity did not recommence for another decade. After 1990, high-rise office buildings were constructed at 310 Ann Street, State Government offices on George Street, and the Harry Gibbs Commonwealth Law Courts. The Crow Howarth building, opened in 2001 at 120 Edward Street, was announced as the "first commercial office building in the Brisbane CBD for over a decade". One project, Admiralty Wharves, was ultimately constructed in the 20th century, but without office towers as originally planned.