Atlassian Central, 8-10 Lee Street, Sydney, NSW

Atlassian Sydney Headquarters is a 40-storey project at Central Station that will become Atlassian’s long-term home in its founding city. The building is designed to support the way Atlassian’s staff will work in future, with flexible spaces, communal areas, planted terraces and a warm, inviting environment for both Atlassians and visitors.

The project also supports Atlassian’s wider ambition to create a landmark headquarters that anchors a new technology precinct and connects more closely with Sydney’s transport network and surrounding public realm.

NDY was engaged by Atlassian in 2019 to provide fire engineering for Atlassian Central. We continued working on the project until it was transferred to Dexus in mid-2021, when Dexus entered an agreement to fund and develop the project and take a major equity stake, with Atlassian remaining a 35% co-owner and anchor tenant.

Our role focused on performance-based fire engineering to support the architecture, sustainability goals and project approvals. This included fire, smoke, structural and egress modelling, bespoke fire testing to verify performance, and advice to help the wider team work within the Australian fire engineering framework. It also involved coordination across a global consultant team working in different time zones and regulatory contexts.

The fire engineering work supported a hybrid mass timber structure, double-skin facades with solar power harvesting, naturally ventilated atrium park spaces and other performance-driven design features. These elements were developed to align with Atlassian’s long-term goals, including 50% less embodied carbon in construction, 50% less energy consumption compared with a conventional building and 100% renewable energy from day one of operation.

For Atlassian and its partners, the result is a headquarters that supports a flexible way of working and helps anchor a new technology district at Central Station. For the city, it strengthens the link between infrastructure, workplace and public realm, while showing how performance-based engineering can support ambitious hybrid timber buildings on a complex urban site.