The World’s Tallest Vertical Garden in Sydney

One Central Park in Sydney has the world’s tallest vertical garden. Designed by Award-Winning Parisian architect Jean Nouvel, and French artist and botanist Patrick Blanc, the towers frame the Sydney skyline – harbour, parkland, scraper and spire – with a curtain of foliage.
The spectacular façade is the canvas for a collection of breathtaking vertical gardens, which can only be described as: “A flower for each resident, and a bouquet to the city” (Bertram Beissel).
The revolutionary symbiotic planting and building concept for Sydney’s newest residence, is an integrated experience for living in harmony with the natural world.
One Central Park is built around a spacious park that will be the living heart of the new precinct. More than 6,400 square metres of parks and public spaces will welcome local communities into the heart of Central Park.
The public park at the heart of the precinct climbs the side of the floor-to-ceiling glass towers to form a lush 21st century canopy. Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens are interspersed in 21 various sized panels across the facades of the two towers, spanning over 1000 square metres and containing 35,000 plants and 350 different species. Its vines and foliage intertwine between each floor on lush balconies, in a vertical continuation of the park below.

“Landscape is architecture,” declares Nouvel. “Here we have created a continuity so the façades extend the park into the sky.”

A defining feature is the ‘monumental cantilever’expressed as a Sky Garden extending from level 29 of One Central Park’s taller East tower. The cantilever supports a light-reflecting heliostat system, , designed to capture sunlight and direct rays down onto the living landscape below. As the sun sets, the enigmatic structure transforms into a glittering display of LED lights designed by renowned lighting artist Yann Kersalé’s. The heliostat design feature is the first of its kind to be used in a residential context in Australia and the largest of its type in the world used in an urban environment.

One Central Park exemplifies what many envision as the future of urban architecture. As concrete structures pave skylines around the world, the urban heat island effect causes temperatures to rise, and a severe lack of greenery has worsened air quality and pollution. The innovative solutions embodied in this building offer a glorious new vision for our future cities.

A statement from Ateliers Jean Nouvel explains: “Beyond the functional convenience, their towering green presence is also a universal signal of life on Earth. This knowledge that vegetation means life is so deeply engrained in human perception that parks and gardens have at all times been the most desirable places to live next to.”