The heritage listed Colonial Sugar Refinery Building at Cutter’s Landing on the fringe of Brisbane’s CBD has won two Queensland architecture awards for developer Mirvac.

The exterior of The Refinery, erected in 1893, has been totally restored as the centrepiece of the A$250 million Cutters Landing project. The transformed interior now houses 30 high quality apartments.

Restoration of the landmark building’s exterior involved completely recladding the roof and tower areas with LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® sheeting made from COLORBOND® steel.

LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® is the classic Australian corrugated profile. It has won an enduring place in local architecture for roofing and walling in residential, industrial and commercial applications.

Its application on The Refinery as part of an adaptive reuse project is an example of the versatility of one of Australia’s most widely used cladding profiles.

As one of only a handful of centralised sugar processing facilities in its era, the Brisbane riverfront building was used to store and process sugar cane brought from all over Queensland and Northern New South Wales.

The Refinery stands on a prominent site at New Farm, with a north-easterly aspect. Its adaptive reuse as part of Mirvac’s Cutters Landing development involved the conversion of a large industrial processing building to a residential use.

Mirvac’s in-house architectural and interior design practice, HPA, was responsible for bringing the vision of The Refinery to life.

HPA Qld Pty Ltd’s efforts have been recognised in the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Qld Chapter) regional, multi-residential and adaptive reuse awards categories.

Preserving the character and cultural heritage of the building was a challenge because of the original floor plan, which was based on six functional segments, related to sugar processing and administrative tasks, Kiln, Char, Pan, Laboratory, Refined Packing and Administration.

The conversion led to the creation of a range of apartment types not often found nor even considered in a new building.

Leading roofing contractor, Fultoncote Pty Ltd carried out the challenging task of recladding the large roof and vertical tower walls of the complex.

“The existing cladding was old galvanised sheeting in very poor condition,” Fultoncote’s Brian Sorensen said.

“We weren’t involved with the removal of the old cladding, but the staging of the construction tasks at The Refinery meant that our installers were back and forth to the site for recladding work several times as other building progressed."

“BlueScope Lysaght supplied over 1,000 square metres of LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® sheeting made from COLORBOND® steel for the work. We used Shale Grey™ for the walls and Windspray® for the roof."

“It was all lifted by crane to the roof and fixed to the frame which had also been extensively rebuilt. The CUSTOM ORB® sheeting for the tower section was manhandled into position and installed with the corrugations running vertically. The final result has transformed the appearance of the building and given it a new look which will last for decades.”

Fultoncote Pty Ltd is one of Queensland’s leading roofing contractors. Its recent major projects have included the installation of roofing on a new Virgin Blue maintenance hangar at Brisbane airport.

The Virgin Blue hangar involved the first Queensland use of the BlueScope Lysaght advanced mobile roll forming unit, which carried out the onsite milling of 7,000 square metres of LYSAGHT KLIP-LOK 700 HI-STRENGTH® concealed fix cladding.