2021 National Award for Public Architecture

Jury citation

This is a playful work that inspires a consideration of how the enjoyment of water-based environments has developed the psyche of an entire culture. The work represents a significant departure from the now-familiar utilitarian approach to enclosed pool environments in New South Wales, prompting a nuanced conversation about how the indoor pool can provide a community room in which there can be architectural expression.

The work is accomplished in delivering a familiar program in a new way, with the architectural expression itself reflecting the ethos of the project. Architecture, in the eyes of this architectural team, has been prioritized in the form of certain exaggerated formal propositions, such as the grand pergola, which acts as an “urban gesture.”

This work is to be lauded for its development of a new awareness of how these important public rooms have raised our sense of communal self, giving us the opportunity to engage with one another in playful and uninhibited structural and architectural space.

— Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre was reviewed by Lee Hillam in Architecture Australia May/June 2021.

Project credits

Architect: Andrew Burges Architects and Grimshaw with TCL in collaboration with the City of Sydney; Project team: Andrew Burges, Andrew Cortese, Michael Janeke, Regan Ching, Cameron Deynzer, Min Dark, Eric Ye, Lucas McMillan, Charles Choi, Gero Heimann, Louise Lovmand, Isabel Adam, Alex Wilson, Nard Buijs, Tom Vandenberg, Marcel Press, Chris Mullaney, Elena Lucio Bello, Robert McFee; Builder: CPB; Structural engineer: Taylor Thomson Whitting; Civil engineer: CJ Arms; Mechanical engineer: BRT Consulting; ESD and facade engineer: Surface Design; BCA and DDA consultant: BCA Logic; Geotechnical engineer: Douglas Partners; Structural , lighting and acoustic engineer (stages 1–3): Arup; Acoustic engineer (stages 4–6): Marshall Day Acoustics; Landscape consultant: Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL); Aquatics consultant: Calibre and EIC Activities

Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre is located in Zetland, New South Wales on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.