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Aedas designed this office building known as the Sandcrawler, whose name was voted by Lucas animators who were about to move into the building.The plan of the nine-storey building is an extended and bent V shape with the core close to the base of the V in response to the shape of the site and the desire to allow landscape to flow under the building.The tapering wings are offices and are 19 metres at their extremities. On the fifth and sixth floors is a double height space with a 100-seat cinema which is fronted by a giant shiny black version of Darth Vader's helmet. The top floor has the quality of a warehouse with a very high sloping ceiling festooned with pipes and the underside of an enigmatic staircase. The slope reflects the slope of the roof called for by the master planning shape rules governing the site.Enclosed by the open wings is a landscape lush with foliage from Muar and Perak in nearby Malaysia. It has secret paths and streams running through the dense planting and into rock pools around which lunchtime strollers may sit. Originally the courtyard was intended as an outdoor cinema but when the client discovered they would have to provide toilets and provide other services they decided on the theme of an overgrown planet.Overhead a third of the V shaped gap between the office wings is crossed by glazing and long aluminium louvres. On either side the elevations step down, each floor overhanging the next and the ends of the wings have a more exaggerated stepping, emphasised by what are effectively small open greenhouses draping hanging planting in a series of cascades.This external glass wrapping defines the external shape of the building. It has a sleek metallic quality and the great shimmering skin is bent around the nose and sides, cut away at the lower edges and left flying in the wind at each ragged end of the tapering V-shaped plan – which incidentally has an average net to gross area efficiency of more than 80 per cent.There are several special things about this suave and sophisticated building. The ground level entrance lobby occupies the 'nose' of the floor with the concierge desk in front of the hitech metal lifts. The curved perimeter of the lobby has an extraordinary continuous adzed timber seat in Malaysian timber which is jointed with wooden butterfly joints at seemingly random intervals – actually where a join was needed during installation.The other is the top floor loft which has the rough finish and unprescriptive layout of an artist's warehouse conversion with a very high sloping roof, random pipework, the underside of a mysterious stairway whose beginning and end are invisible.
Aedas designed this office building known as the Sandcrawler, whose name was voted by Lucas animators who were about to move into the building.
The plan of the nine-storey building is an extended and bent V shape with the core close to the base of the V in response to the shape of the site and the desire to allow landscape to flow under the building.
The tapering wings are offices and are 19 metres at their extremities. On the fifth and sixth floors is a double height space with a 100-seat cinema which is fronted by a giant shiny black version of Darth Vader's helmet. The top floor has the quality of a warehouse with a very high sloping ceiling festooned with pipes and the underside of an enigmatic staircase. The slope reflects the slope of the roof called for by the master planning shape rules governing the site.
Enclosed by the open wings is a landscape lush with foliage from Muar and Perak in nearby Malaysia. It has secret paths and streams running through the dense planting and into rock pools around which lunchtime strollers may sit. Originally the courtyard was intended as an outdoor cinema but when the client discovered they would have to provide toilets and provide other services they decided on the theme of an overgrown planet.
Overhead a third of the V shaped gap between the office wings is crossed by glazing and long aluminium louvres. On either side the elevations step down, each floor overhanging the next and the ends of the wings have a more exaggerated stepping, emphasised by what are effectively small open greenhouses draping hanging planting in a series of cascades.
This external glass wrapping defines the external shape of the building. It has a sleek metallic quality and the great shimmering skin is bent around the nose and sides, cut away at the lower edges and left flying in the wind at each ragged end of the tapering V-shaped plan – which incidentally has an average net to gross area efficiency of more than 80 per cent.
There are several special things about this suave and sophisticated building. The ground level entrance lobby occupies the 'nose' of the floor with the concierge desk in front of the hitech metal lifts. The curved perimeter of the lobby has an extraordinary continuous adzed timber seat in Malaysian timber which is jointed with wooden butterfly joints at seemingly random intervals – actually where a join was needed during installation.
The other is the top floor loft which has the rough finish and unprescriptive layout of an artist's warehouse conversion with a very high sloping roof, random pipework, the underside of a mysterious stairway whose beginning and end are invisible.