Luxury revamp of Sydney’s ‘ugliest’ building. Would you live there?

Developers have said they intend to “retain, restore and re-imagine” the Sirius building which sits alongside the southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the suburb of The Rocks.

The concrete, Lego-like former public housing block, which overlooks the harbour, has long been divisive.

Built in 1979, fans lauded Sirius as a distinctive example of Australian brutalist architecture and a reminder of The Rocks’ working class heritage. But detractors called it an ugly carbuncle that spoiled the harbour foreshore and should be replaced with a modern creation.

The building was almost pulled down after the NSW Government refused to heritage list the structure in 2017. Just last year, NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet put Sirius in the top 10 of buildings he’d happily demolish.

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Luxury makeover for Sirius block

The building was saved when JDH Capital, the firm of former Macquarie banker Jean-Dominique Huynh bought it for $150 million in 2019.

The company has now released further information about its plans for Sirius.

Internal walls that hem in the current cramped flats will be ripped out to build 76 new apartments.

Gardens will pepper the many roof areas alongside infinity pools with Opera House vistas. A marble clad reception will greet residents.

Seven penthouse apartments will go on the market for $12 million, quite the hike on the charge to public housing tenants. One bedroom flats are expected to go for $1.7 million a piece.

“It has so many attributes – fantastic views, looking right at the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, the city and out to the Heads,” JDH Capital’s development director John Green told The Australian.

“It was also long and slim, so I knew once we had arranged the apartments internally we could get front and back crossflow apartments – it is rare to have windows on both sides.”

Sirius threatened with demolition

Sirius was built in 1979 to house displaced public housing tenants from elsewhere in the tourist mecca of The Rocks as gentrification took hold.

It was ahead of its time. Richly designed community spaces were built in, all flats had access to the outdoors, palms lined rooftop gardens and units for elderly residents sported alarm bells to ensure help could come quickly.

But by the late 2010s it had come to be seen by many as an unnecessary eyesore rearing up on motorists as they crossed the Harbour Bridge into the CBD.

By 2017, only two residents remained in Sirius. The magnificence of her Opera House view was lost on 91-year-old Myra Demetriou.

“I’m blind, so I’m lucky if I can make out a ship,” she told news.com.au at the time.

The NSW Government’s denial of heritage listing Sirius put it at serious risk of demolition.

“Whatever its heritage value, that value is greatly outweighed by what would be a huge loss of extra funds from the sale of the site,” then NSW Environment and Heritage Minister Mark Speakman said in 2016.

It kicked off a vigorous campaign to save the building which including Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore among its many supporters.

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‘We learn to love these buildings’

Sirius backers conceded the building was confronting.

“Sirius is a bit like Madonna; people either love it or they hate it, but at least they notice it,” Shaun Carter, the former NSW president of the Australian Institute of Architects and the head of the Save our Sirius campaign told news.com.au.

“I used to see it when crossing the Harbour Bridge. I would sit on my dad’s knee when he was driving and I’d see it as we came into the city. It was one of the buildings that made me fall in love with architecture.”

Mr Carter compared Sirius to Sydney’s much-loved Queen Victoria Building, which in the 1960s was itself threatened with demolition to be replaced with a car park.

“The only way we knew how to value these buildings was through a financial model and a car park stacked up pretty well,” he said.

“I get that to try and understand brutalism is a struggle because it’s not the architectural orthodoxy. But these buildings have grand gestures, they are like medieval castles built as utilitarian structures.

“If we spend time with these buildings, like the QVB, we can learn to love them all over again.”

Mr Carter said if Sirius wasn’t saved there would have been no guarantee an architectural masterpiece would have replaced it.

“Be careful what you wish for because we could get another Meriton block.”

The first of the new generation of Sirius tenants are due to move in next year.

News.com.au contacted Save our Sirius for the group’s view of the development of the building it fought so hard to save.