Client: Macquarie Bank (Anchor Tenant)
Location: 1 Elizabeth Street
Scope: Design, Supply, Install & Commission
Duration: 36 months (design through final commissioning) Delivered by: Climate Ready Engineering
1 Elizabeth is a 40-floor commercial office tower anchored by Macquarie Bank — a building where architectural ambition met a genuinely difficult engineering problem. Climate Ready Engineering was engaged for the full lifecycle of the project: from initial design through to supply, installation, and commissioning of a building-wide automated shading system.
The result is one of the most technically sophisticated shading installations we’ve delivered — combining robust-engineered hardware, bespoke logic software, and deep integration with the building’s core systems.
Three factors made this project stand out from a typical high-rise shading rollout:
Custom GUI A purpose-built graphic user interface displaying a live elevation view of every window in the building. Facilities teams can see real-time feedback as blinds move up and down, floor by floor, giving full visibility and control across the entire tower.
Non-standard geometry. 1 Elizabeth’s façade design includes angled, trapezoidal, and parallelogram-shaped windows rather than uniform rectangular glazing. This meant shading solutions couldn’t be templated floor-to-floor — each irregular window required its own engineering and calibration.
Exposed cabling. With all cabling left exposed rather than concealed within the building fabric, cable management became a critical part of the install. Every run had to be planned and executed for a clean, tidy finish that would hold up to scrutiny in a premium commercial fitout.
Climate Ready Engineering designed and delivered an integrated shading system built around four core components:
SMI Shading System High-density blind control architecture, with each controller capable of managing up to 48 blinds — engineered to handle the scale of a 40-floor tower efficiently.
Tenant Comfort. the automated systems needed to minimise the heat gain and prevent glare from disrupting employees, ensuring their comfort. The shading control system had to consider the reflectivity from the other surrounding buildings which causes glare and discomfort for the tenants within the building.
Schneider BMS Integration The shading system was integrated directly with the building’s Schneider Building Management System, enabling energy performance monitoring alongside shading operation — treating shading as part of the building’s broader energy strategy, not a bolt-on.
Crestron AV Integration Shading control was extended into meeting rooms via Crestron AV integration, allowing blinds to be managed as part of the room’s broader AV environment.
Custom Glare Management Rather than a one-size-fits-all glare setting, the system uses custom glare zones defined per façade, per season — accounting for the sun’s changing angle throughout the year. For example:
This seasonal, façade-specific approach ensures shading responds to how the sun actually moves across the building, rather than applying a static rule year-round.
1 Elizabeth demonstrates Climate Ready Engineering’s capability to take a project from first design sketch through to full commissioning on one of Sydney’s more architecturally complex commercial towers — solving for irregular geometry, deep systems integration, and long-term flexibility, all on a scale spanning nearly 40 floors and a 3-year delivery timeline. It is an all-electric building that runs on 100% renewable energy and boasts a 6 Star Green Star As Built rating
Client: Dexus (on behalf of building owners)
Location: No. 1 Bligh Street, Sydney
Scope: Design, engineering, and commissioning of a bespoke solar shading control system
Duration: 2012 l Still in operation today
Delivered by: Climate Ready Engineering
In 2012, No. 1 Bligh Street became Australia’s first Six Star Green Star high-rise office tower, and its facade control system was a genuine world first. Over a decade on, that same system is still running — a rare thing in a building industry where “smart” technology is often obsolete within a few years of installation.
Climate Ready Engineering designed and delivered a solar control system comprising **897 individually programmed controllers, operating 1,780 Horiso specialty venetian blinds within the elliptical, double-skin ventilated facade spanning 29 storeys. Each floor manages 64 separate blinds facing 64 different directions — a direct response to the building’s curved, all-glass form designed by German architects Ingenhoven, in collaboration with Australian firm Architectus.
More than ten years later, the system continues to deliver the performance it was built for — proof that solid engineering fundamentals age far better than trend-driven technology.
No. 1 Bligh Street’s elliptical shape created 64 distinct facade angles — a problem no standard shading control system of the time was built to solve. Most systems could handle one, two, or three angles within a single control zone. This building needed a unique orientation-aware solution for every single blind.
Compounding the challenge, the facade used untinted glass with a 62% Visual Light Transmission rating to preserve harbour views — maximising natural light and outlook, but also maximising heat load into the building’s mechanical systems.
The brief: design a shading control system capable of operating within an elliptical, ventilated facade with a 600mm-wide cavity, while accounting for surrounding buildings, overshadowing, and indirect glare bouncing off the harbour and neighbouring towers.
Climate Ready Engineering approached this as a systems-design problem, not just a hardware install:
This decentralised, low-complexity architecture is precisely what has allowed the system to remain relevant well beyond its installation date — there’s no single point of obsolescence, and no dependency on a server platform that technology has since left behind.
5 Star NABERS Energy rating, with a 42% CO₂ reduction compared to a similar conventional office tower
Employees consistently made greater use of space closer to the facade, thanks to controlled solar and natural light conditions — reducing wasted floor space
The system’s tenant-comfort focus supported the anchor tenant’s productivity and wellbeing goals, allowing staff to work in a consistently controlled environment
More than a decade on, the system continues to deliver the same energy performance and comfort outcomes it was engineered for — without requiring a platform overhaul
No. 1 Bligh Street has been recognised extensively for its design and sustainability credentials, including:
Building details: Owned by DEXUS Property Group, DEXUS Wholesale Property Fund, and Cbus Property. Architecture by Architectus and Ingenhoven. Built by Grocon. Facade by Arup, with facade consultancy by Enstrust.
No. 1 Bligh Street isn’t just a case study in what CRE could build in 2012 — it’s proof of an engineering philosophy that holds up. Decentralised intelligence, open protocols, and control systems designed around real physics rather than passing trends don’t just perform well at commissioning; they keep performing years — and buildings — later.
It’s the same approach behind every system Climate Ready Engineering delivers today, from heritage-constrained refurbishments to next-generation towers like 1 Elizabeth.
