2022 National Award for Public Architecture

Jury citation

The Walsh Bay Arts Precinct makes a significant contribution by bringing together Sydney’s cultural and arts- based communities into one of the city’s icons: the wharves. Masterfully crafted, respectful of its heritage and pedigree, and with abundant detailing, this project is transformative for a number of Sydney’s most important institutions as well as for the public.

Highly resolved, technically complicated and culturally inclusive, the project’s excellence lies in a design response that facilitates performance, acoustic separation and visitor flow – all within a heritage envelope. The comfortable, evocative journey along the internal perimeter leaves you in no doubt as to where you are, with views and vistas capturing the city and its intrinsic relationship to the water and the harbour.

— Walsh Bay Arts Precinct was reviewed by David Welsh in Architecture Australia September/October 2022. Read the review here.

Project credits

Architect Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects; Project team Peter Tonkin, Julie Mackenzie, Grant Sandler, Dmitry Troyanovsky, Jeremy Hughes, Anton Van den Berg, Heather Cappie-Wood, Sophie Hutchinson, Alison Osborne, Kevin Lee, Regina Meyer, Nazia Kachwalla, Wolfgang Ripberger, Sujata Bajracharya, Matilda Watson, Alessandro Belgiorno-Nettis, Bethany Sullivan, Todd Solman, Roger O’Sullivan, Brian Zulaikha; Builder Richard Crookes Constructions; Project delivery Infrastructure NSW; Heritage consultant Tropman and Tropman Architects; Structural and facade engineer, civil consultant Taylor Thomson Whitting; Fire engineer, ESD, acoustic design and engineering, building services engineer, theatre and AV consultant, maritime consultant Arup; Planner MG Planning, GTK Consulting; Acoustic consultant Accessibility Solutions; BCA consultant and certifier Blackett Maguire and Goldsmith; Kitchen consultant Sangster Design Group; External signage and wayfinding Minale Tattersfield; Internal signage and wayfinding CC Williams for TZG Signage; Traffic engineer Stantec (formerly GTA); Aboriginal and historical archaeologist CRM Marine archaeologist Cosmos Archaeology; Marine ecology Jacobs; Masterplanning Bates Smart

Walsh Bay Arts Precinct is located in Walsh Bay, New South Wales on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.