The 43-storey tower in Brisbane that promises to be ‘quite the address’.

With the first CBD waterfront tower in more than a decade, Cbus’s 443 Queen Street’s $375 million tower aims to capitalise on demand from downsizers seeking an urban lifestyle.

Designed by local architecture firm Architectus, led by Elizabeth Watson Brown, and Richard Hassell of Singaporean firm WOHA, the 43-storey tower is designed around a central core with the apartments splayed out, offering greater cross-ventilation and natural light.

“It will be a remarkable Queensland-living environment, a true realisation in contemporary architecture of the way we love to live in Brisbane, in the benign climate and our beautiful gardens,” Watson Brown said.

Four-bedroom penthouses are priced from $2.1m to $2.9m. Penthouses will sell for $6.5m.

The design was built on the idea of a traditional Queenslander lifted on stilts with verandas, a breezeway and open spaces, which will not only allow greater ventilation and light throughout the building but ensure lower body corporate fees.

“The design is quintessentially Brisbane in character, not designed for Sydney or Melbourne or New York or Singapore,” according to planning documents.

Trees will line the podium and rise up the central spine of the building to the rooftop. Space is also a maximised with either four or six units on each level.

The proposal raised controversy in Brisbane over the developer’s use of transferable development rights over a separate heritage building it owns, to build a taller tower on the riverside site.

The University of Queensland, which owns the adjoining heritage Customs House, is continuing its challenge against the tower in the Supreme Court after losing in the Planning and Environment Court.

Sales kick off this weekend.

CBRE sales agent Paul Barratt said the generous living spaces and practical details were suited to the owner-occupier.

“It’s absolutely a home to live in,” he said. “When the project is complete it will be quite the ­address.”