World's first 'upcycled' skyscraper saves Australian tower from demolition

[KevinFromTexas]

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/au...per/index.html

World's first 'upcycled' skyscraper saves Australian tower from demolition

Published 6th December 2022
Written by Oscar Holland, CNN


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Once Sydney's tallest building, the AMP Centre was showing its age. The outdated 1970s structure had come to the end of its lifespan, and the tower's owners wanted to replace it with something bigger, better and more energy-efficient.

But demolishing high-rises comes with significant environmental costs, from construction waste to the CO2 emitted by heavy machinery. So in 2014, Australian investment firm AMP Capital launched an architectural competition with an unprecedented brief: To build a new skyscraper without demolishing the old one.

Dubbed the world's first "upcycled" high-rise, the resulting tower opened earlier this year and, on Friday, was named World Building of the Year 2022. Standing at 676 feet tall, the vastly expanded 49-story skyscraper, now known as Quay Quarter Tower, retained more than two-thirds of the old structure, including beams and columns, as well as 95% of the original building's core.

[mousquet]

This is called "restructuration lourde", literally heavy restructuration.
There's been quite a number of such real-estate operations over the past couple of decades.
For instance in Paris:

Until 2007.

Paris, La Défense, Tour AXA by Pascal POGGI, on Flickr

Same structure as of 2011.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_First

So, it took roughly 4 years to do this.

Only, the restructuration of that high-rise in Sydney apparently goes even further, adding many more square feet to the original building.
But it is definitely not the 'world's first "upcycled" high-rise', lol.

[Amanita]

NYC has been doing this to skyscrapers for years- everything from reclad and internal overhaul to reconstruction, see 425 Park Avenue and TSX Broadway most recently. Or 666 5th and 2 Penn Plaza.