Australia’s tallest building: Gold Coast and Melbourne in sky high construction war

THE Gold Coast and Melbourne are engaged in something of a construction war and, for both, the sky is the limit.

WHEN it comes to iconic, globally recognised architecture, Sydney really has Australia covered.

So, how are the Harbour City’s rivals supposed to compete?

With size, apparently. Paging Doctor Freud.

On Wednesday, the Gold Coast City Council approved a development application for the 328m Orion Tower, which, when completed early next decade, will be Australia’s tallest skyscraper.

It’s just one of eight towering structures set to transform city skylines over the next decade, as developers increasingly reach for lofty new heights.

In a decade, these will be the five tallest buildings in Australia. Four are under construction.

Eureka Tower and Q1 are the only completed buildings that will make the top 10 within the next few years.

Nowhere will it be more evident than in Melbourne and on the Gold Coast, two cities where, unencumbered by ceiling height restrictions imposed by aviation authorities, architects can reach as high as the developer’s funds allow.

By 2022, the seven tallest buildings in Australia will be located in one of those two cities.

In recent times, they seem to have been engaged in something of a construction war, one-upping the other’s tallest building, sometimes by only a metre.

For nearly two decades, Melbourne was the proud home of Australia’s highest structure, first with the landmark 250m Rialto Tower, completed in 1986, and then the 265m tall 120 Collins Street, completed five years later.

Q1, at right, is currently Australia’s tallest building at 323m. The Orion Tower, at left, will replace it at the top of the list.

Enter the Gold Coast.

In 2005, the coastal Queensland holiday city snatched the honours, with the completion of the Q1 apartment building, which remains, to this day, the tallest building in the country.

But not for long. Both cities have rapidly upped the construction ante.

In February, Melbourne proudly proclaimed it would once again be home to Australia’s highest building, with the approval of an application by James Packer’s Crown Resorts to build a six star hotel skyscraper, One Queensbridge, which will rise just 1.1m higher than Q1.

The celebration was short-lived, when the Gold Coast Council approved an application — by a Melbourne-based development company, no less — to build the 328m Orion Tower.

By 2022, the only three structures to make the top 10 tallest list outside the two cities will be the 271m Crown Sydney Hotel and Resort, currently under construction, and two, 270m buildings under construction in Brisbane, the Skytower and 30 Albert Street.

A new six-star hotel complex by James Packer’s Crown Resorts in Melbourne was trumpeted as Australia's new tallest building when approved in February.

So, why the aggressive competition between New South Wales’ southern and northern neighbours for tall buildings, when it barely seems to register on Sydney’s radar?

University of New South Wales senior lecturer in High Performance Architecture Dr Philip Oldfield told news.com.au there’s a simple answer.

They want to snatch some of the attention the Harbour City receives globally.

“I think this race to the top is something akin to, ‘my dad’s bigger than your dad’,” he said. “There’s always a prestige associated with it. New York had that prestige for 40 years, with the Empire State Building being the world’s tallest building and increasingly city planners are using tall buildings as a tool to portray vitality, the brand of their city to everyone.

“But Sydney has inherent architecture icons, such as the Opera House, obviously, and so perhaps it doesn’t feel it needs to compete.”

The under-construction Australia 108 building will surpass Eureka Tower, on the right, as Melbourne’s highest structure. It's tenure will be short, however, as it will be surpassed by the new tower from Crown Resorts.

That said, however, Sydney does have another element stifling super tall construction.

Like Brisbane, it has a height ceiling set by aviation authorities, which does not apply to either the Gold Coast or Melbourne.

“It is quite startling that in the top 20 tallest buildings in Australia by 2020 only two will be in Sydney,” Dr Oldfield said.

And though they may not be the tallest, Dr Oldfield said all Australian cities were going through something of a skyscraper boom, as populations in our once sparsely populated country grow exponentially in the cities.

Brisbane’s 30 Albert Street, left, and Skytower, both under construction, will both reach the city’s ceiling height limit of 270m.

“Australia is the kind of centre of the world in terms of tall buildings at the moment,” he said.

“Over 300 buildings in Australia are over 100 metres tall, that’s a lot of buildings.

“While we have the space, the city is always attractive and we can’t all live in our suburban home and be 30 minutes from the city.

“Increasingly we have to build up.”

However, while the Gold Coast and Melbourne continue to duke it out, Australia still falls a long way behind on the world scale.

The world’s tallest building, Dubai’s 828m Burj Khalifa, is 2.5 times the height of the planned Orion Tower on the Gold Coast.

An artist’s impression of the proposed twin Orion Towers on the Gold Coast.

Nonetheless, the competition for the regional title will always remain, Dr Oldfield said.

“What you have at the moment is urban competition between cities, all the tallest buildings are within five or six metres of each other, so it’s all about edging ahead, the power of having the tallest building.

“It has been going on for over a century. In the 1930s New York, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings were both under construction and neither gave public details of how high they were and so this race to the world’s tallest, to create an icon for a global audience, has always been there.”