Woods Bagot Wins Sir Osborn McCutcheon Award for its A-Grade Office Tower

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Woods Bagot has won the 2022 Victorian Institute of Architect’s Sir Osborn McCutcheon Award for Commercial Architecture for 405 Bourke Street Melbourne. It is a premium A-grade office tower development. The 39-level skyscraper, one of the biggest commercial structures in the city, uses a 16.5-meter cantilever to rise over the nearby residential building and blend in with its historic façade.

The judges gave Woods Bagot praise for “crafting a flawless floorplate inside a flawed site” at 405 Bourke Street in Melbourne’s CBD, which was built by Multiplex and developed by Brookfield Properties. 405 Bourke, known as “The Lantern” for the way its seven-story glass lobby façade lights up at night, was able to rise above the existing apartment complex and blend in perfectly with its historic façade thanks to a stunning 16.5-meter cantilever from level 11 to level 13 of the building. This cantilever is used in interior architecture to create the magnificent and lush “mega truss” zone.

Through many repetitions and reflections that refract and absorb light over the laminated edges of the façade, Melbourne’s Hoddle grid’s rhythm is revealed in deconstructed form. The façade’s strikingly straight forward pattern of repeated laminations catches the sun in various ways throughout the day. The structure is known as “the lantern” by Melburnians because of the lamination’s soothing nighttime light.