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The clarity of PAC’s circular form aids wayfinding and complements existing and future pathways in the Mays Hill Precinct Masterplan.

Parramatta Aquatic Centre by Grimshaw with Andrew Burges Architects and McGregor Coxall

The sophisticated design for a public recreation hub on the edge of Sydney’s second CBD emphasises the contiguity of city and landscape, creating a sense of reciprocal spectacle.

Public / cultural
Carefully planned playgrounds can be key urban infrastructure that serves the whole community.

Bradbury Park Play Scape by Alcorn Middleton

Alcorn Middleton Architecture

The agility of its small practice enabled Alcorn Middleton to assemble a collaborative design team to win a competition for a local playground; the outcome is an experientially rich piece of active urban infrastructure for the whole community.

Public / cultural
At the new entrance, an elevated parapet faces the street in an exaggerated yet apposite expression of the library’s former entry.

Nambucca Heads Library Extension by Vokes and Peters with Zuzana and Nicholas

Layered upon an existing structure, this character-filled extension proposes a new direction for a community hub while leaving opportunities for surrounding buildings to respond in their own manner.

Public / cultural
MPavilion 10, designed by Japanese architect and 1995 Pritzker Prize laureate Tadao Ando, and executive architect Sean Godsell.

MPavilion 2023

Professor of architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, Paul Walker reviews MPavilion 10, designed by Japanese architect and 1995 Pritzker Prize laureate Tadao Ando, and executive architect Sean Godsell.

Public / cultural
By architecture practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Less is designed to be a non-commercial public space that users can activate as they see fit.

Dairy Road Masterplan

Molonglo Group, David Chipperfield Architects (residential), Assemble (UK) (industrious), Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture, Craig Tan Architects, Oculus Landscape Architecture & Urban Design, Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Oculus Landscape Architecture & Urban Design, David Chipperfield Architects, Assemble (UK) with JAM and Ell Ell Architects, Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture

On a site east of Canberra and adjacent to wetlands, a collaborative team whose process inverts the “master” plan paradigm is gradually designing a diverse neighbourhood in a restored landscape.

Commercial, Landscape / urban, Public / cultural
Originally inward-looking and with a narrow public street address, the centre now opens up to its surrounds and generates a welcoming atmosphere.

The Pavilion Performing Arts Centre Sutherland

The inventive refurbishment of an existing performance venue extends the community’s opportunities and opens up the growing suburb’s civic heart.

Public / cultural
The bright atrium of the Joanna Capon Reading Room is revived by a reglazed roof and vertical wall, a new polished concrete slab, spotted gum bookshelves, and matching timber and leather furniture.

Art Gallery of NSW Library and Members Lounge

Volumes of warmly lit timber define Tonkin Zulaikha Greer’s library and members lounge redesign, which simultaneously respects heritage and serves contemporary communities.

Public / cultural
The architect has carefully introduced a new design language, inverting the pavilion’s original insular perspective to open it up to the beachfront.

Bondi Pavilion Restoration and Conservation Project by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer

In a delicate balance between conservation, intervention and demolition, TZG has unified an “unruly collection of parts” to bring a cultural icon back to the centre of community life in Sydney.

Public / cultural
Warrnambool Library and Learning Centre is a joint project of the state government, South West TAFE and the city council.

Warrnambool Library and Learning Centre by Kosloff Architecture

By knitting together a new three-storey building and a refurbished, heritage-listed hall in regional Victoria, Kosloff Architecture has designed a valuable asset for the community and the local TAFE.

Education, Public / cultural
The first impression is one of clear sightlines and generous spaces in which abundant light and fresh air welcome Central Station’s commuters.

Sydney Metro Upgrade of Central Station

A long-awaited expansion to Central Station’s Northern Concourse reworks decades of disparate elements to deliver clear wayfinding, strong civic scale and ample natural light.

Public / cultural
The entry plaza and ticket box are covered by a corrugated glass canopy. Artwork: Francis Upritchard.

Sydney Modern Project by SANAA

Conceived a decade ago, SANAA’s design for a new wing for the Art Gallery of New South Wales gradually draws visitors down a steeply sloping site, through a series of offset pavilions and into a dramatic space inside a World War II fuel tank.

Public / cultural
Revisited: State Library of Queensland

Revisited: State Library of Queensland

The State Library of Queensland has become one of Australia’s most cherished public living rooms. We asked several people with different connections to the library to reflect on their experiences of the building and its spaces.

Public / cultural
The plaza sits between Mirvac’s EY Centre by FJMT, Lendlease’s 180 George Street by Foster and Partners, and Studio Hollenstein’s Jacksons on George, whose roof terrace is at a similar height to the plaza’s building terrace.

George Street Plaza by Adjaye Associates with Daniel Boyd

Adjaye Associates with Daniel Boyd

In Sydney’s CBD, a small, collaborative project makes a significant contribution to the city’s public spaces, encouraging us to consider multiple perspectives and our own place in the universe.

Public / cultural
New Farm Neighbourhood Centre by Vokes and Peters with Zuzana and Nicholas

New Farm Neighbourhood Centre by Vokes and Peters with Zuzana and Nicholas

Vokes and Peters with Zuzana and Nicholas

With its alterations and additions to an inner-suburban Brisbane Queenslander, a local design team created spaces that work together like an ensemble cast to encourage human habitation and celebrate the community’s daily routines.

Public / cultural
The triangular shape of the design allows sunlight through to the public square year-round.

Phive – 5 Parramatta Square

Design Inc with Lacoste and Stevenson, and Manuelle Gautrand Architecture

Amidst Parramatta’s sprouting field of skyscrapers, the city’s sculpturesque new civic centre and library building cantilevers over the public square and carves out its own space, creating “a stage for the theatre of community life.”

Public / cultural
Years of accumulated architectural detritus have been stripped back, with new insertions honouring the history of the site while making it fit for purpose.

Collingwood Yards by Fieldwork

In repurposing the derelict site of an inner-Melbourne technical college, this project seeks to embed arts in the community, provide affordable studio space in an otherwise unaffordable area and create public amenity that is welcoming to all.

Public / cultural
Unlike the structure it has replaced, the new pavilion is permeable, preserving sightlines and ease of movement.

Riverside Green by Hassell

Ostensibly a simple sequence of spaces, Riverside Green is a skilfully designed facility in Brisbane’s South Bank Parklands that is adaptable enough to allow the public to curate its own urban experience.

Public / cultural
The grass embankment pushes the public domain deep into the building, where the civic chamber is located.

Walyalup Civic Centre by Kerry Hill Architects

On a challenging site in the heart of Fremantle, KHA’s design for a multifunctional civic centre demonstrates that modernism can be used to restore civic urbanity, celebrate a place of historic significance and craft an engaging space for public enjoyment.

Public / cultural
Since the renewal work, the acoustics are equally good from all seats in the concert hall – a vast improvement from the previous situation.

Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Renewal by ARM Architecture

In a surprising yet entirely appropriate intervention, ARM Architecture has worked with a diverse team of experts to improve acoustics, access and mechanics in one of Australia’s most iconic heritage buildings.

Public / cultural
Public yet personal, the space can be interpreted and used according to the needs of each visitor.

A space sculpted by landscape: Victorian Family Violence Memorial

Beside a busy Melbourne intersection, an understated commemorative space honours the lives of victim survivors, looks to the future with hope and invites incidental engagement.

Public / cultural
The conversion of the site into a permanent home for Sydney’s arts institutions will ensure the preservation of the historic structures into the future.

Industrial cathedrals: Walsh Bay Arts Precinct

A dexterous amalgam of architectural interventions turned a 100-year-old pier on Sydney Harbour into a permanent home for some of Australia’s leading performing arts companies.

Public / cultural
Local gidgee stone is the building’s primary material, a design nod to the land art movement begun in the Northern Hemisphere.

‘Ingeniously demure’: Muttaburrasaurus Interpretation Centre

In a tiny Central Queensland town, an elliptical rampart structure built from local stone celebrates a 100-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton and creates a distinguished landmark for palaeontological tourism in the region.

Public / cultural
Two concrete planes, five metres tall, mark the entrance to the sound chapel.

Music, desert and sky: Cobar Sound Chapel

Glenn Murcutt in collaboration with Georges Lentz

A years-long discussion between composer and architect has resulted in an immersive sound–design experience inside an old water tank at the desert’s edge in New South Wales.

Public / cultural
A 600-seat amphitheatre has been inserted into the circular concrete structure on the water that once supported a towering crane.

From deforestation to regeneration: Spring Bay Mill

An old woodchip mill on Tasmania’s east coast, once an integral part of the state’s controversial logging industry, is now a post-industrial events and performance venue and the site of ongoing environmental regeneration.

Public / cultural
SAM’s relatively small footprint has allowed more land on the previously degraded site to be returned to its natural state.

Bold confidence: Shepparton Art Museum

With an ambition to “change agendas,” the commanding new Shepparton Art Museum in regional Victoria stands as a counterpoint to the landscape, while accommodating the natural floodway and maximizing the surrounding parkland.

Public / cultural
The new Rockhampton Museum of Art engages with the city’s 1901 Customs House and helps to activate the public space surrounding it.

Venturous and engaging: Rockhampton Museum of Art

On Rockhampton’s riverbank, a new art museum designed by local and national practices in partnership connects the city’s architectural heritage with contemporary art and culture.

Public / cultural
The arrival forecourt forms a “social knuckle,” where activities converge.

A curated piece of utopia: Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge

On a site gifted to the public for artistic enjoyment, a design team led by Kerstin Thompson Architects has integrated landscape and architecture to transform the location while preserving its natural ecosystems and cultural context.

Public / cultural
The facade’s half-pipe concrete pillars reduce sight lines into the building, while their matt white finish holds and softly reflects light.

Church of the Living God

In suburban Sydney, a mixed-use building for the community of the Church of the Living God offers a civic presence and a deep sense of the sacred while communing with the surrounding streets.

Public / cultural
The visitor is drawn into the Egyptian collection by the beautifully lit granodiorite head of Ramses II.

Design immemorial: The Nicholson Galleries, Chau Chak Wing Museum

At the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, the new Nicholson Galleries, designed by Studio Plus Three, respects and celebrates the largest collection of antiquities in the Southern Hemisphere.

Public / cultural
The collaborators have taken advantage of the overhead railway line to create a lush, shady sanctuary in the middle of subtropical Brisbane.

Tactical urbanism: Fish Lane

Richards & Spence, Aria Property Group

A neglected post-industrial area of central Brisbane is transformed into a vibrant arts precinct through a collaborative private delivery model with a nuanced approach at both the strategic and the fine-grain scale.

Commercial, Landscape / urban, Public / cultural