Quay Quarter Tower announced as a 2025 Earthshot Prize finalist

Retrofitting — rather than demolishing — one of Sydney’s iconic buildings, once the city’s tallest upon its completion in 1976, was devised by the co-owners, alongside Arup and a coalition of architects, engineers, building contractors, and developers, including Danish architects 3XN, Australian executive partner BVN, structural engineers BG&E and contractor Multiplex.

By retaining 65% of the original structure and 98% of the core, the team avoided more than 12,000 tonnes of embodied carbon, while doubling the tower’s usable office space. The retrofit also saved more than 120 sqm of space per floor through the world’s first example of double-deck elevators retrofitted into a Premium-Grade tower.

With nearly 20% of global buildings needing low carbon retrofits by 2030², Quay Quarter Tower delivers a replicable roadmap. Its radical model of reuse has already influenced future policy in Australia and inspired similar projects in global cities including London.

It is this combination of leadership, innovation, and future potential that captured the attention of The Earthshot Prize during its 2025 selection process – proving that sustainable design can be both visionary and replicable.

Project

Quay Quarter Tower

Read about Arup's sustainable building design, façade design and smart building technology strategy for Quay Quarter Tower.

Prince William, Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize said, “As we reach the halfway point of the Earthshot decade, I am truly inspired by this year’s Finalists, which embody the urgent optimism sitting right at the heart of our mission. In just five years, The Earthshot Prize has shown that the answers to our planet’s greatest challenges not only already exist, but that they are firmly within our grasp.”

Robert Saidman, NSW ACT Leader, Arup said, “Quay Quarter Tower is a powerful demonstration of what’s possible when engineering ingenuity meets environmental responsibility. By transforming a 50-year-old structure into a high performance, future-ready workplace, we’ve shown that building reuse at scale is not only viable – it’s vital. As the world confronts the climate crisis and overuse of critical materials, this project proves that reusing and regenerating our built environment must become the new normal. We call on designers and engineers, and developers globally to embrace adaptive reuse as a cornerstone of sustainable urban transformation.”

Fred Holt, Design Lead, Partner 3XN, Director 3XN Australia, said: “The demolition cycle is one of the greatest threats to our global climate goals. Quay Quarter Tower proves that transformation at significant scale is possible and, critically, commercially viable. We extended the life of a building by decades, halved its carbon impact, and created a more engaging workplace for thousands of people. This recognition from The Earthshot Prize reinforces that regeneration must replace destruction as the new standard. We hope that our approach can help redefine urban development, offering a blueprint to meet low-carbon ambitions as our cities worldwide continue to grow.”

The project to upcycle Quay Quarter Tower was completed in 2022 and has since been recognised as World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival, winner of the International Highrise Award, and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s World Building of the Year.

Quay Quarter Tower joins a community of 60 Earthshot Prize Finalists who are making significant progress in protecting and restoring our natural world.

This year’s cohort were selected from nearly 2,500 nominees submitted by the Prize’s network of 575 nominators from 72 countries. The 15 Finalists were chosen based on assessments done by The Earthshot Prize’s selection partners and Expert Advisory Panel, a global group of more than 100 subject-matter experts with deep backgrounds in conservation, science, technology, business, finance, academia and policy.

As in previous years, the five Winners of this year’s Prize will be selected by Prince William and fellow members of the prestigious Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse group of individuals dedicated to protecting the climate and our natural environment. The Earthshot Prize Council is chaired by The Earthshot Prize Board of Trustees Chair, Dame Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris Climate Accord.

Members of The Earthshot Prize Council are Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Cate Blanchett, Indra Nooyi, José Andrés, Wanjira Mathai, Nemonte Nenquimo, Luisa Neubauer, Naoko Yamazaki, Ernest Gibson, and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Solutions selected align to the five ‘Earthshots’ – simple, ambitious and aspirational goals but more relevant than ever before.

To find out more about this year’s Finalists, please visit the website. Arup is a Global Alliance Member of The Earthshot Prize.   

1. 40% of emissions come from real estate; here’s how the sector can decarbonize
2. Renovation of near 20% of existing building stock to zero-carbon-ready by 2030 is ambitious but necessary