The evolution of Sydney’s civic and commercial life can be found on Market Street. Once a produce marketplace, it became the hub of aspirational consumerism, first with department stores, then the shopfronts of luxury brands. Soon a new megastructure will mark a tipping point in this evolution on the junction of Market and Castlereagh Streets.
111 Castlereagh will house premium office spaces and a luxury retail precinct behind the sandstone facade of the old David Jones store. On top of this platform will be 22 storeys of luxury residences within a bronze curvilinear tower that will “appear to bear no load, floating above the heritage building below, while offering residents a premium address with the city’s most coveted views.”
The concept art reveals the view most coveted. On the rooftop terrace, lush greenery enshrines a private pool and gym overlooking Hyde Park and a dwarfed St Mary’s Cathedral. With this contrast, 111 Castlereagh presents a rival vision of fulfilment. It celebrates what the philosopher James K.A. Smith calls a secular liturgy, with practices and rituals that promise to fulfil our desires, only to leave us disenchanted.
In this floating tower the new aspirational class can link lifestyle with formation, and find a new job, new friends, a new identity, with immediate access to the best of what the city has to offer.
The building developers Cbus Property recognise this, which is why they are “proudly delivering something truly exceptional that will leave an everlasting impression on the centre of the city – and most importantly, on the people who will live here.”
Cbus claims that the building will satisfy the needs of the professional who (ostensibly) goes to work at 9am and heads home at 6pm, who can go downstairs to a boutique metro foodhall for their daily feed.
A concierge service will be available to make social bookings that they wouldn’t otherwise have the energy to organise. If they pay premium, they can also access to a climate-controlled wine cellar that will impress their friends and entice them back for more social bookings, which the concierge would only be happy to assist with.
These practices and rituals reduce the human being to a component in a machine, for which the building provides fuel and service as part of a total lifestyle system. The price to participate is staggeringly high. In August 2021 $66m was generated from the sale of just three apartments – one double storey penthouse for $35m, and two smaller sub-penthouses for $15.5m each.
“The city is where we come face-to-face with people who arouse our sympathies—not just the homeless, but also other strangers, whether they be other workers, families, or tourists.”
The interior designers at fjmtinteriors stated that these apartments will be connected to the life of the city, while also being a private haven of retreat, relaxation, sophistication, and beauty. This desire, for connection to the city while maintaining your own private haven within it, is the very image evoked by the building: floating above the city, with immediate access to its vital heart.
But this is a blatant paradox—to remain in your own apartment and escape the messy clamour of life below is to deny the very essence of the city. As Aristotle stated in his Politics, the city is meant to bring together people who are different, with the trust that this plurality will only enrich the lives of those within it.
The city is where we come face-to-face with people who arouse our sympathies—not just Sydney’s ever-present homeless population, but also other strangers, whether they be other workers, families, or tourists.
111 Castlereigh’s “rival”, St Mary’s Cathedral, is a perfect example of a building integrated into city life. When Mass is being celebrated, there is always the possibility of being interrupted in some annoying way, whether it be from the noisy cars outside, or the tourist trying to get a photo of themselves “praying” in the middle of communion.
This openness of the cathedral to city life – in all its difficulty and strangeness – is precisely what makes it so real, and compelling. Unlike the megastructure that will soon tower above it, the cathedral is not an escape from the world.
Rather, it is—in the words of Fr Alexander Schmemann—the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world. It is here that we realise what it means to live in the city: it is to create a place where the exile can feel at home.
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