With the surge of growth seen in major western cities emerging after the end of World War II, a demand for large scale high-rise office accommodation using modern technologies developed.

Taking the minimalist sculptural approach to the early modernist design of large scale commercial projects, the twenty six-storey AMP Tower is constructed of a concrete encased structure of steel-framework.

The St James Building façades area also defined by ribs, clad in the same polished re-constructed brown granite as the AMP Tower, but which angle both out and to one side at 45 degrees, ending as the supports for with arcades surrounding the plaza.

The “russet tones and muscular masonry forms” [2] of the two granite clad buildings were complemented by the 'knotted' corten steel sculpture, Awakening, by internationally recognised artist Clement Meadmore.

[10] The original Plaza was kept almost bare in a deliberate attempt to maintain the minimalist styling, with the arcades hidden from sight by the deep recess of the protruding, angled colonnades of the St James Building.

AMP Square defines itself from preceding projects which used sheer curtain glass walls, such as Orica House by Bates Smart McCutcheon, by taking the approach of heavy massing, also seen in the slightly earlier 1966 Victorian Government States Offices also by Yuncken Freeman.

Combined with the public realm of the St James Plaza these open spaces challenged the density of the city grid, a testament to an attempt at a new sui generis for commercial projects at a grand scale.