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Yeah, I'm curious to know what's happening with 223. I walk past every day and it's hard to see the progress being made on this one. Is the green mesh to hide what it looks like or protect the public from falling debris?

The mesh is finally coming down! This morning the top floor was exposed.

I'll take some pics tomorrow arvo.

Yeah it's been like that for a couple of days now.



Look how faded the advertisment is, shows how long it's been up there!

yea i saw this one today. it dominates that end of North Tce from Victoria Drive and round near the zoo

It looks fantastic from the University Bridge as well.

Great shots. Looks excellent.

looks great from hindmarsh square too...

this actually is a real centrepiece for eastern North Tce in terms of height and modern architecture!

good to see the wraps finally coming off.
bit hard to tell the outcome without seeing the full deal though

thanks for the pics mate

BTW, just on the engineering side of things, I find this building really interesting.

Most of the stuff you see going up today is built with a 50 year design life, for example the commonwealth law courts. Yet here we have a building close to 50 years old which can quite easily accommodate a 7 storey extension. Now, i'm aware that the original car park was built to support such a structure, but it's still amazing that it can be done at a time where most of today's designs would have reached their end of life.

Another building that comes to mind is the old Santos HQ, with the planned 4 storey extension. It's about 30 years old, so I wouldn't have expected it to take the additional load all that easily. Yet the engineers have given it the go ahead. These things were built to last that's for sure!

Are engineers these days being serious when they quote a new construction's lifespan to be 50 years? Or is it "definitely 50, more like 100" ?

The lifespan is based on how long a building would be able to withstand its own load without any sort of maintenance. The maintenance is what continues to increase the life of a structure. There are some buildings in Europe that continue to function with minimal problems that are over 500 years old. Some of the megastructures built between 1900 and 1950 were so overengineered that it is estimated that some could stand for at least 500 years without any sort of maintenance, including the Empire State Building.

Although the engineering for 223 is interesting it is not extraordianry, based on the fact that when the car-park was built in 1968, it was designed as the bottom half of a proposed car-park-hotel building. For some reason the hotel on top of the car-park was never built, but the structure was built to support the weight of the hotel.

The same situation can be seen at Parliament House. The structure is designed the support the dome which was never built.

lol, this is like a slow striptease. Looking quite sophisticated IMO. I like the shiny cladding - much slicker than standard painted concrete. They've evidently spent a bit of money on this one, which is completely appropriate given its location
seems to be worth the wait
thanks for posting the pics Algernon

Adelarch wrote:lol, this is like a slow striptease. Looking quite sophisticated IMO. I like the shiny cladding - much slicker than standard painted concrete. They've evidently spent a bit of money on this one, which is completely appropriate given its location
seems to be worth the wait
thanks for posting the pics Algernon

It'll be interesting to see if the vertical strip additions to the car park portion have been given the flick or not. I feel they really complete the design, so let's hope not.

Overall i've been pretty impressed with the overall design for quite a while.

Taken this arvo:



It looks like they'll be doing up the lower half of the facade as well, it'd look bizzare without it. The bulk of this building is really impressive standing in front of the Art Gallery. David Jones looks tiny next to it!