Riverside Centre, Brisbane

Designed by internationally renowned architect Harry Seidler in 1983, the $200-plus million development included a 40-storey office tower, a plaza providing open-air public space with access to the Brisbane River, and entertainment, food and transport facilities.

By the time construction work was halted for the outbreak of World War II, the Brisbane City Hall clock tower was the tallest structure in the CBD, being 278 feet (85 m) high.

This private development was accompanied by a city-wide council-led program to modernise Brisbane, by providing or upgrading public facilities, roads, sewerage systems, and undertaking beautification projects:[18][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][1] The high-rise office tower emerged as a building typology during the late 19th century in Chicago and New York in the United States of America, where architects and engineers manipulated the metal frame, electric lift, and air-conditioning systems to establish tall buildings for work spaces.

[43] During the 1960s and 1970s, heavy concrete curtain wall cladding was popular, and from the late 1970s, building designs increasingly featured flat, sleek and reflective surfaces, including all-glass facades or polished marble or granite.

[93] A Jones Lang Wootton (JLW) survey in October 1985 identified Santos House, Comalco Place [Blue Tower], and the Colonial Mutual building as "prime", with the forthcoming Riverside Centre and Central Plaza One also to fit into that category.

[104][105][106] The company formed a development triumvirate with construction and engineering business, Civil and Civic, and financial enterprise, General Property Trust (GPT), allowing it to undertake significant projects.

Civil and Civic itself had been established in 1949 when Dusseldorp arrived in Australia to inspect the Snowy River Scheme for a Dutch joint venture, and decided to invest in the company's development potential.

[132] "Riverside Brisbane" was proposed to include an office tower, shops, residential apartments, plazas, promenades, a marina, an "historic precinct" for the soon-to-be-demolished Wool Exchange, and a section of the riverfront road, a condition of the development's approval.

"[135] The company highlighted its desire to create a "total pedestrian environment" with tourist facilities including restaurants, taverns and bistros "to give the complex life after business hours".

[160] The foyer was ceiled by external support concrete beams brought together in a decorative web pattern, designed by Mario Desideri, successor to renowned Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi.

At 1,500 square metres (16,000 sq ft) the tower's floor size was unusually large, allowing larger firms and businesses to consolidate their operations into a smaller area, providing advantages in improving communications and reducing costs.

It was enhanced by landscaped gardens, trees, and a jet fountain water feature which pooled on each side of the triangular building's riverside face, and cascaded down the terraced plaza towards the river.

[160][175][161] Stairs and ramps (called by Seidler, stramps) carried pedestrians down to the riverfront, where a promenade extended along the site's 180m river frontage, lined with bollards linked by nautical chains, purpose-designed by the architectural team.

[185][186] In accordance with its intention for Riverside Centre to be its landmark development of the decade, Lend Lease promoted the building project heavily, including addressing any potential issues with an immediate public relations campaign.

[243] The curvilinear beam was questioned by architectural commentators and members of the public (as it "seems to interfere with the river relationship and restricts views to Kangaroo Point", but, Seidler explained, it served a most important aesthetic purpose.

Nevertheless, anyone who has been in Brisbane on a weekend, when the Riverside ground level plazas are throbbing with market stalls, eating and meeting places will appreciate what a vital contribution this architecture makes to public urban life".

Neville Quarry notes that 'in his recent works, such as QV1 in Perth and the Riverside Centre in Brisbane, that Seidler's balancing of the contending pressures of rectilinear and curvilinear motifs would most closely fit Frampton's notions of isostasis".

Thanks to the availability of river views across two-thirds of the tower,[268] Riverside commanded some of the highest rents in Queensland - $444 per square metre in 1988 - and was credited with increasing rental levels in prime office market from 15% to 20%.

[287][285][113][288][289][290][124][223] Riverside Centre remained one of the few 20th century office tower developments in the Brisbane CBD to cost over $100 million, with only two further projects, both neighbours to Riverside Centre, before the economic recession of the 1990s: the two-tower Central Plaza complex designed by Japanese architect, Kisho Kurokawa, and Queensland architectural firm, Peddle Thorp, opening in two stages; and Waterfront Place, designed by Perth architectural firm Cameron Chisholm Nichol, and also opened in two stages (Eagle Street Pier, 1989; Waterfront Place, 1990).

[310][311] Building management and tenants hosted art displays, showcase exhibitions,[312] and fundraising events in the foyer;[313] and a viewing gallery in the Stock Exchange fit-out was open to the public.

Renamed the Riverside Markets, the Sunday event proved a huge attraction, bringing large numbers of suburban residents and international tourists to the site on a weekend for the next 22 years.

Riverside Centre was part of Brisbane's identity shift in the 1980s, providing facilities for al fresco dining before it was incorporated into the Town Plan in the 1990s; and popularising open, riverfront gathering space with markets and promenades in the leadup to Expo 88.

Bloomberg and its subsidiary, Riverside Developments, engaged Harry Seidler and Associates to design a new mixed-use (residential, retail and commercial) tower for the site, to be called Riparian Plaza.

According to de Gruchy, "The sculptural entrance columns of Riverside and the new Riparian Plaza by Harry Seidler and Associates add further quality to the architectural environment of the precinct which now stretches beyond the old Customs House.

[361] Fit-outs in the office tower and plaza buildings have regularly changed to suit new tenants, including remodelling of the ASX floors and the installation of river-facing windows in the formerly windowless lower levels.

[1] The office tower's exterior is a grid of grey granite stone cladding and large banks of fixed windows shielded on the north-east and north-west sides by external metal sunshades.

[1] The plaza surrounding the office tower provides a pedestrian thoroughfare from Eagle Street at the west end of the site, stepping down to the Riverwalk and Brisbane River at the east.

The principal characteristics demonstrated at the place are its: prestressed concrete structure, multistorey construction (over 11 storeys) comprising repeated floor plates and a structural service core; modular exterior cladding and glazing; foyer providing centralised access; internal public spaces and surfaces finished with high quality materials, and flexible office floor plates designed to allow for individual tenancy fit-outs.

[1] The visually striking office tower's beautiful attributes are demonstrated through its well-composed symmetrical and sculptural triangular form, repetitive facade treatments of uniform dimensions, and impressive foyer incorporating modern artwork.

These awards acclaim the Riverside Centre's: outstanding architectural quality; the office tower's refined and rational design (including its form, scale, size, materials and structural system); impressive foyer with quality materials; considered responses to climate (including exterior sunshades tailored to orientation, and sky gardens); well-ordered urban design and the generous, open space of the plaza layout; and the highly-regarded physical and visual connection of the place to the Brisbane River.

Harry Seidler, 1954
1978 map of the area showing Parbury Lane and the AUSN wharves, replaced by the Riverside Centre
Eagle Street entrance, 2023
Ferry wharf at the Riverside Centre, 2023
Christmas tree in Riverside Centre foyer, 2016
2011 floods at the Riverside Centre
View of Brisbane River from a corner "sky terrace" on the top floor, 2023
Plaza with walkway canopy looking toward Eagle Street, 2023