Sydney Tower
The Sydney Tower, formerly AMP Tower and Centrepoint Tower, is a television and observation tower in Sydney, Australia. The open to the public tower in the Central Business District is 309 meters high and has an observation deck at 251 meters altitude. After the Sky Tower in Auckland, it is the second tallest telecommunication tower in the southern hemisphere. As skyline formative structure of the Australian metropolis he belongs along with the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge to its most important landmarks.
- 2.1 Location
- 2.2 Description
- 2.3 public facilities
- 3.1 Sydney Tower Stair Challenge
- 3.2 Other Events
- 3.3 Use
History
Planning and construction
The first plans for the Sydney Tower and a publication which took place in March 1968. The first tests for wind behavior and further studies were carried out at the Sydney University. A similar model was tested in the wind tunnel boundary layer wind tunnel of the Canadian University of Western Ontario. In mid- 1969, the insurance company AMP decided to implement the construction project.
Construction on the tower and the shopping center at the foot of the tower took you to the early 1970s. The design dates back to the architectural firm Donald Crone & Assoc. Pty Ltd.. Until the construction of the television tower, the maximum building height in the city was 279 meters in order to ensure the flight safety of seaplanes. In 1972 opened the first stores in the mall. Construction on the tower structure itself began in 1975. Many components were prefabricated brought to the construction site and assembled there.
The tower basket consists of 14 pre-fabricated, welded frame that you put together on the roof of the shopping center. Work on the basket lasted from 1977 to 1979, the one emporhievte with the progressive shaft construction using three hydraulic pumps. He was additionally secured with nuts on the mast, if one of the hydraulic presses would have been. The floors of the tower top are made of concrete. The assembly of the tower shaft was carried out from 46, each 27 -ton prefabricated components.
The construction time of the 30 meter high antenna tip is mounted in two pieces and brought them without the help of a crane with a two-stage vertical stamping. After fastening the upper half, the lower half of the antenna pushed on 11 November 1980, the top in position. The opening of the Sydney Tower by the Prime Minister Neville Wran was held on 24 September 1981. The total cost amounted to 36 million Australian dollars. In the first year the tower climbed around 1.3 million visitors.
Since opening
By attaching an additional lightning rod on top of the tower in 1998, the building grew by seven meters to a total height of 309 meters.
Occasion of the Olympic Games in 2000, was installed in July 1998, three sculptures of athletes with the help of a Sikorsky S- 64 on the roof of the tower top. The sculpture represented a gymnast doing a handstand, the second a Paralympic basketball player and the third a Sprinter represents the approximately twelve each meter high and three and a half ton figures adorned by 2003 the tower and then came to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra and the Olympic Park.
The name of the tower changed several times. The original, but not official name Centrepoint Tower after the eponymous shopping center in December 2001 gave the name AMP Tower after the finance and investment company AMP, which was the builder of the tower. Since the transition of ownership to the company Westfield Group Sydney Tower, the tower is called. By the 25th anniversary in 2006, more than 16 million visitors were counted.
Remained on 2 July 2008 due to a malfunction of the elevator eleven people at 200 meters altitude in the elevator of the tower stuck. With a further lift the passengers were freed after one and a half hours without injury. The third lift conveying visitors on. The following year they closed the base building because of fundamental modernization and opened it in 2010 under the name Westfield Sydney again. On 25 and 26 June 2006, the old AMP logo was replaced by a helicopter on the turret basket through an illuminated, 6 meters high and 20 meters long logo of the Westfield Group.
Since 2011 the British leisure company Merlin Entertainments Group operates the audience area. They invested approximately $ 3.5 million for the transformation of the observation decks and the restaurant floors. Since taking over the observation deck Sydney Tower Eye is called.
Location and description
Location
The Sydney Tower is located in downtown Sydney's Central Business District ( CBD). He stands to the west of Hyde Park in the shopping area, the on Market Street, which borders Pitt Street and Castlereagh Street. Access to the tower is via the Pitt Street Mall, the pedestrian Pitt Street.
Description
The 309 meter high Sydney Tower stands on the 16- storey department store Westfield Sydney with more than 100 stores in the 50,000 tons 25,000 cubic meters of concrete are installed. Prevent the skyscraper can absorb the mass of the tower structure on the roof, it was further reinforced by shear walls. From the roof rises, mounted on a solid concrete base plate, a slim core pipe up with a diameter of only 6.70 meters, on which the tower basket is placed with the tip. Nevertheless, it houses the elevator shafts and two spiral fire escapes. The base plate is 1.3 meters thick and measures 10 meters in diameter. As a frame of the tower structure is a Hyperboloidkonstruktion in the form of 56 per 182 -meter-long steel cables, each with a mass of 7 tonnes. Each steel cable is made from 235 each 7 millimeters thick wires which are galvanized to protect against rust. The steel cable stretched between base plate and tower basket against the notched tube. Here we covered a part of the cable from the extreme right to the extreme left; the other part of opposite directions in order to obtain a higher stiffness. The wire size is so small that it is hardly noticeable from a distance and the tower thus appears free-floating on the thin tube mast.
The four-storey tower basket with a diameter of around 30 meters is an inverted, truncated cone lighter which is lined with a gold - bronze aluminum facade. Above this is reversed conical a five-story, windowless upper part of the antenna installations, to the roof of the tapered antenna support crowns the building. The tower basket has a recessed handle, are housed in the directional antennas in the upper third. In the top pole support both the sender for telecommunications and aviation. Without the tip of the antenna tower building is 275 meters high.
The Sydney Tower weighs 2,239 tons. The 7th floor in the tower basket includes a 162,000 liter water tank, which is used for power supply and disaster also holds fire water. A sophisticated system of hydraulic dampers in the water tank ensures that at wind movements, the pendulum-like motion of the water mass is compensated so that they do not uncontrollably escalates and endangers the construction. The Sydney Tower was calculated so that it can withstand hurricanes a maximum thickness of 260 kilometers per hour, which statistically occur only once in a thousand years.
Public facilities
The open every day except Christmas Day Tower is open to visitors for a fee as a lookout available. Three double -decker elevators for each 16 persons per cab ride each year up to 800,000 visitors to the four-storey public area. The speed of the elevators depends on the wind strength; at the maximum speed does the driveway about 40 seconds. In addition to the observation deck at 250 meters above sea level, there are two revolving restaurants and a cafe in the tower basket. Thus, the Sydney Tower, the highest publicly accessible observation deck on a building in Australia. Even the higher Q1 Tower well beyond the tower in this relationship. In the tower basket at most 960 persons may be seated. With 1504 refractory stage two separate escape routes lead down.
From the viewing platform there is access to the Skywalk at 260 meters above sea level on top of the Sydney Tower. This platform dealing with glass floor is since 18 October 2005 and is made from 2000 steel items, which are held together with rivets and bolts 4376. The design phase of this public area lasted four years, in two months, the platform was built at a cost just under four million Australian dollars. On the Skywalk secured with a leash of visitors from the roof of the tower top in the open air has a view of the city.
The Sydney Tower is a movie theater is set up, you can look over the city of Sydney and Australia in the visitor 4D movies. In the entrance area there is a gift shop.
The view stretches up to 85 km over the natural harbor of Sydney to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east, Botany Bay in the south and the Blue Mountains to the west. To help the visitors to find their next telescopes are multimedia and multilingual touch screen monitors with information about the landmarks of Sydney available. For a clear view of the 420 windows are cleaned regularly with a semi-automatic cleaning machine. The process takes about two days; this requires 50 liters of water.
Events and use
Sydney Tower Stair Challenge
Since 1989, a flight of stairs will be held at the Sydney Tower in the summer. This must be overcome as 1504 levels in a 60 to 70 - storey high-rise. The staircase runs without mezzanines spiral counterclockwise and has a narrow handrail. The record is currently (2013 ) the three-time winner Paul Crake placed the required 6:52 minutes for the run -up in 2002. In the women presented Venessa Harvard in 2009 the record with 8:45 minutes. The average time for overcoming the height is 18 to 20 minutes. The German athlete Thomas Dold won in 2009 and 2010 the run. After the break in the years 2011 and 2012, a sports competition was held again on 18 August 2013.
Other Events
The Sydney Tower is integrated choreography at the traditional New Year's fireworks. Especially in the years before and during the Olympic Games in 2000, the tower was pyrotechnic set in form of an Olympic torch with colored lights in the scene.
Use
In addition to the tourist use of the Sydney Tower is a communications and telecommunications tower. Two of the five floors of the upper tower top serve telecommunications purposes; in three floors, the operating rooms are housed.
Reception in the media
The landmark character of the tower means that he is often shown in films set in Sydney or Handlungsort is. In the action film Mission: Impossible II (2000 ) you can see the tower appears several times representative once the center of Sydney appears. In the sci-fi film Supernova - When the sun explodes (2005), the tower is destroyed by a split of a supernova meteor. In one scene in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004 ), in which the monster Zilla is teleported into the city, the Sydney Tower is also destroyed. The monster is later attacked by Godzilla, besides, also the Sydney Opera House is devastated. Also in Youth Film Power Rangers - The Movie (1995 ) joins the Sydney Tower in appearance.