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Established in 1996

QT,  Sydney, Former Gowling & State Theatre Building

GHD Design (formerly GHD Woodhead and Woodhead)

Opened in 2012, QT Sydney, developed by Amalgamated Holdings Ltd, was the first new five-star hotel to be completed in Sydney’s CBD in over a decade. The landmark project adapted the upper levels of Sydney’s much-loved, historic State Theatre Building and the Gowings Building, located on the corner of Market and George Streets, into a unique contemporary design hotel.

Established cultural values and adaptive reuse principles blend to create a Boutique Hotel focused on design. The design approach is a synthesis of contemporary design ideas, adaptive reuse, conservation of the existing historic building fabric and spaces, and reinterpretation of historic elements to embody a more contemporary idiom. The project also involved the strategic reconstruction of various key historic built elements.

  • Image Credit: Simon Wood Photography
  • Image Credit: Simon Wood Photography
  • Image Credit: Simon Wood Photography
  • Image Credit: Simon Wood Photography
  • Image Credit: Simon Wood Photography

The conservation philosophy centres on the adaptive reuse of the buildings, which enables and encourages public interaction with the original building elements. The conversion conserves and recaptures the important features of the buildings, enhances the significance of the place, revivifies the retail precinct and sympathetically integrates the ground level at George and Market streets with the city streetscape.