One Sydney Harbour

Lendlease’s three-tower Renzo Piano-designed residential development at Barangaroo South closed out a 15-year urban regeneration project in late 2024, finishing the transformation of a former container terminal into one of the densest mixed-use precincts on Sydney Harbour. The tallest of the three buildings, Residences One, reaches 247 meters across 72 floors, the tallest residential structure ever built in Sydney.

Residences One and Residences Two topped out in December 2022 and March 2023, respectively, with Watermans Residences completing in December 2024. Total sales across the three towers exceeded AUD $3.7 billion, with the penthouse on Residences One reportedly selling for AUD $140 million.

Project Scope

The development spans 808 residential units across three towers: Residences One (72 floors, 247 meters, 350 apartments), Residences Two (68 floors, 230 meters, 322 apartments), and Watermans Residences (29 floors, 104 meters, 136 apartments). The three towers share a podium that integrates 6,500 square meters of waterfront public realm, restaurant and retail tenancies, and a private residents’ club.

Renzo Piano’s design pulls each tower’s massing back from the harbour edge in a series of stepped setbacks that maximize harbour views across the three buildings rather than concentrating them in any single tower. The façades are glass-and-aluminium curtain wall fabricated by Permasteelisa in Vietnam and shipped to site in pre-assembled four-story stacked units. The structural system uses high-strength reinforced concrete cores with post-tensioned perimeter slabs spanning 12 meters typical, a slimmer floor plate than most Australian residential supertalls, achieved through the use of 80 MPa concrete in lower-floor columns.

Robert Bird Group’s structural engineering had to thread the foundation system through a complex matrix of existing harbour-edge retaining walls, a heritage seawall, and the live Wynyard Walk pedestrian tunnel running beneath the site. The basements extend three levels below grade with secant pile walls cut into Sydney sandstone, and a 2.4-meter mat foundation under each tower core that distributes the gravity load onto bedrock at roughly 15 meters below grade.

The MEP strategy uses centralised plant in a podium-level plant room with district heating and cooling shared between the three towers. All three buildings achieved 6 Star Green Star certification under the Green Building Council of Australia’s Design and As Built rating tool. Embodied carbon was reduced by approximately 35% against a Sydney CBD reference building through the use of supplementary cementitious materials in the concrete mix (fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag combined at roughly 40% replacement) and recycled steel.

Why It Matters

Barangaroo South began with a 2003 NSW government decision to relocate the working container terminal that had defined the western edge of the Sydney CBD for half a century. The redevelopment proceeded under one of the most controversial planning processes in modern Australian history, with shifts in foreshore setback, building height, and public-realm allocation generating sustained legal and political challenges. The completion of One Sydney Harbour closes the final piece of the master plan and resolves the last of those questions on the ground.

For Sydney’s residential market the three towers reset the top end. Sales volumes across the buildings tested whether the harbourfront super-luxury segment could absorb 808 units priced from AUD $3 million to over $100 million in a single program. The answer turned out to be yes, with Residences One sold out within 18 months of launch and significant Australian and international demand on the upper floors.

The project also closes Lendlease’s largest single Australian development in its history. Total Barangaroo South investment over the 15-year build sits north of AUD $6 billion across the three International Towers commercial buildings, the Crown Sydney casino tower (delivered by Crown Resorts on a separate parcel), and the three Residences. The company is using the precinct as the reference case for its planned Birmingham and Boston waterfront programs, though both of those projects have been scaled back since Lendlease’s 2023 strategic reset away from international development.

Project Team & Details