Harris St Building Profile

Harris Street is an original wool store building with ornate mass brick facades and robust hardwood timber internal construction. Built in the 1890s and added to in the 1910s and 1920s this building represents Sydney's successful pastoral period when Australia was dependant on wool for its wealth. With its grid construction and mass brick external shell this building was common for commercial building design of its period and a precursor to multi-storey commercial buildings in Sydney. The project brief was to reimagine the building as an active and dynamic office space, delivering new vertical transportation and emergency egress and to incorporate an atrium which would deliver light deep into the massive 4,500 sqm footprint. The adaptive reuse of this building is at its heart a sustainable project. The embodied energy of the original wool store building has been reused and minor alterations to the external building fabric, such as the addition of shading hoods to the northern elevation have been incorporated, delivering a building that is responsive to its environment. The redevelopment of the building has seen it restructured for another 100 years of use, providing flexibility for future tenant requirements while delivering much needed boutique office space within the residential village of Pyrmont.