Evelyn Reynolds

A state significant application for a 31-storey tower above the forthcoming Pyrmont station in Sydney has been granted concept approval by the NSW government.
The high-rise is set to be established on a triangular site at 37–69 Union Street. Designed by Woods Bagot, the building will accommodate residential, commercial and retail uses. The residential component will comprise 160 apartments across 16,198 square metres, while commercial office space will span 5,241 square metres, and 2,024 square metres will be allocated to retail and dining options.
Links to the metro station will be integrated throughout the building, providing occupants with direct access to public transport.
The indicative designs for the project were unveiled in March 2024, leading to a public exhibition and consultation phase that garnered 32 submissions. These included 16 objections, 11 supporting responses and five neutral comments. The main concerns related to building height, overshadowing, traffic congestion and potential loss of views. In response, further consultation and design refinements were made.

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The built form has been envisioned as a tower atop a podium typology, with the five-storey podium to house the commercial and retail components and the tower to accommodate residential use. The podium features a predominantly brick facade with metal accents, while the tower’s facade features a glazed curtain wall with fine-grain metal fins and cladding. Repetitive bays and arches on the building’s exterior aim to echo the facades of surrounding buildings.

With concept approval granted, the next phase involves detailed development applications to refine architectural details, sustainability measures and construction timelines. The Pyrmont Metro Station is scheduled to open alongside the rest of the Sydney Metro West line in 2032. More

Powerhouse has announced the recipients of their Photography Architectural Commission – one of two major annual photography commissions from the museum. New Zealand-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based photographer Tasha Tylee has been awarded the $20,000 commission to collaborate with Powerhouse on major new works over the next year.
According to a release from Powerhouse, the architectural commission “aims to develop new perspectives on Australian architecture and the built environment, with a focus on construction, urban development, housing, infrastructure and sustainability.” Past winners of the annual commission include Rory Gardiner, Amanda Williams and Matteo Dal Vera.

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Focusing on material innovation within Australia’s built environment, Tylee will document the development of newly developed sustainable materials. Beginning with their natural form, she will follow the manufacturing, fabrication and installation processes, ending with the materials used in a completed build.
Tylee commented, “In light of the ongoing climate crisis, I’ve been reflecting on how we can collaborate to build a more sustainable future. As an image maker, I believe I have a unique opportunity to contribute by visually capturing and sharing these innovative ideas.”
“This incredible opportunity allows me to expand the scope of my practice and document the future of sustainable architecture and the built environment within Australia,” Tylee added. Her past photography commissions include the Naples Street House by Edition Office, winner of the Australian Institute of Architects 2024 Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture, Sawmill Treehouse by Robbie Walker, and Ground House 107R by David Fewson.

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Powerhouse has awarded their First Nations Right of Reply Photography Commission to Guwa-Koa, Gungarri, and Kuku Yalanji photographer Jo-Anne Driessens, who will undertake a body of work that responds to the Powerhouse Collection with the intent to Indigenise, counter and investigate narratives of the applied arts and sciences through a First Nations lens. More

Submissions can now be made for the James Dyson Award (JDA), an annual design and engineering competition open to emerging designers across the globe.
Established in 2005, the award aims to support the next generation of inventors by providing a platform to deliver a technically and commercially viable solution to a problem – particularly one that targets a sustainability issue.
“James Dyson believes that young people in STEM hold many of the answers that can make a positive change towards tackling the world’s most pressing issues,” a media communique from JDA reads. “So, the brief is simple – solve a real-world problem that could make a real difference to people’s lives.”
The competition is held across national and international stages, with a national winner receiving $9,950 to develop their invention, and the ultimate international winner receiving $59,700. A Sustainability Grand Prize is also on offer, to the value of $59,700.
In the past, Australian entrants have been awarded internationally. Ed Linacre, who won the international award in 2011, developed an Airdrop irrigation concept to harvest evaporated water moisture from the air. In 2024, Australian entrant Sorbet secured a spot in the award’s Global Top 20 with an acoustic panel design made from shredded household textile waste and a starch-based glue.
To qualify for the award, teams must be led by a current degree-level apprentice, university student, or a graduate from the past four years, enrolled in engineering, product design or industrial design. Other team members must be (or have been within the past four years) enrolled for at least one semester in an undergraduate or graduate education program.
This year’s entries are set to be judged by a panel of experts and a Dyson engineer. Three Australian entrants will be selected for consideration for the Global Top 20, from which James Dyson himself will select the global winner.
The competition is open internationally across a list of countries, including Australia. Details on how to apply can be found online. More

The winner for the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Walls Around Us Student Competition has been revealed from a shortlist of nine individuals. Ming Hin Chung, who graduated from the Melbourne School of Design with a Bachelor of Design (Architecture) in 2024, has been named recipient of the prize and will travel to Venice for the Biennale Architettura Vernissage in May this year.
The jury – comprising national business development manager at Brickworks Eve Castle, senior lecturer in architecture and urban design at RMIT University Christine Phillips, and director of Terroir and professor of practice at the UTS School of Architecture Gerard Reinmuth – agreed that Hin Chung’s proposal was a clever, multifaceted response to the brief.

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Penned by Hilary Duff, project architect at Kennedy Nolan, the competition brief invited students to imagine a new way of living on the Boyd House II/Walsh Street site by thinking critically about material use through minimising quantities, being tactical in composition, and extending the life of both structures and materials.
The jury commented that Hin Chung’s winning scheme, titled Growing House, “cleverly proposes an inversion of Boyd’s original design by placing the house inside a garden and rethinking the brick walls as permeable screens. This spatial sophistication is reinforced in a series of details that show a clarity of intention right down to the assembly of individual elements.”

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One high commendation and two commendations were awarded by the jury. Also from the Melbourne School of Design, Andy Wilson’s proposal, titled Link-House, received a high commendation due to the clarity of its “singular intervention [that] forges a meaningful link between past and future design approaches, physically uniting the two structures while embracing Robin Boyd’s tight-fit spatial approach.”

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Genealogical Timeliness in the Anthropocene by RMIT University student Connor Harris, and 12 Rooms for Walsh Street by Melbourne School of Design student Je Yen Tan both received commendations. More

Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and David Jones have unveiled the $50,000 Australian Design Commission, which offers a unique opportunity for one talented designer to create a prototype for a product that embodies the future of the Australian home.
Set to launch in August 2025, this prestigious commission invites a designer to explore the rich design history of the David Jones archive, a treasure trove of Australian design spanning nearly two centuries. With the full support of Powerhouse Museum and David Jones, the selected designer will receive $50,000 to bring their vision to life over a nine-month period. In addition to financial backing, the designer will benefit from invaluable curatorial expertise, mentorship, access to the Powerhouse Collection, and workshop space.
The culmination of the commission will be the creation of a prototype, set to be unveiled in 2026 at David Jones’ Elizabeth Street store in Sydney. The designer will collaborate closely with the retailer on a special window display, offering a public debut of their new creation.
This commission builds on the ongoing collaboration between Powerhouse and David Jones, which began with the donation of the David Jones archive to the Powerhouse in 2024. This partnership ensures that the archive will be preserved, celebrated, and remain a touchstone for future generations of designers.
The commission is open to Australian-based designers, with submissions being accepted until 5pm on May 4, 2025. The recipient will be announced in July 2025 More

A new resource has consolidated a century’s worth of architectural registrations and nearly four decades of architectural graduations in Australia, marking the first time this information has been made publicly accessible.
Released by Parlour, this resource is known as the Parlour Data Bank. The database contains detailed spreadsheets on architectural registrations at the state level, as well as between genders, from 1924 to 2024. Additionally, the spreadsheets provide a snapshot of architectural graduations between states and genders from 1987 to 2023.
The findings show that women were registered as architects across the entire century, with the proportion of women architects dramatically increasing over the past twenty years. The data also shows that a continuous record of registration data has not always been kept, as can be seen in the years 2000–2004.

In 1924, Australia had 12 registered women and 1,197 men architects. In 1974, fifty years later, there were 275 women architects and 5,591 men architects registered in Australia, which equates to an increase of 263 women and 4,394 men architects between 1924–1974. In 2024 – the most recent registration year recorded – there were 5,543 women architects and 12,013 men architects registered in Australia.
The number of both domestic and international architectural graduates in Australia has also seen a marked increase. In 1987, there were 147 women and 309 men graduates. By 2023, women represented a larger proportion of architectural graduates, with a total of 2,105 women graduates compared to 2,066 men graduates.
The data has been meticulously gathered and cross-checked by architect, researcher and educator Gill Matthewson and her team over 13 years. The datasets build upon earlier efforts by Julie Willis, who collected data on registered architects from 1924 to the mid-1990s, and Paula Whitman and her colleagues, who compiled similar information in the early 2000s.
Matthewson commenced the data collection – with architectural researcher Kirsty Volz – as part of her PhD, which focused on the research project “Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architecture Profession: Women, Work and Leadership (2011–2014).” Led by Dr Naomi Stead, one of the aims of the research project was to map the participation of women in architecture, a responsibility that Matthewson undertook, resulting in the most comprehensive data on registration within the profession at that time.
To access the full data or read more about the data sources, visit the Parlour website. The majority of the data sources primarily view gender as a binary concept. More recent data from some state architectural boards now encompass a broader spectrum of gender identities. More

Entries are open for the 2025 Australian Good Design Awards – a program celebrating design projects that positively impact people, place and planet.
The Australian Good Design Awards features 30 awards subcategories encompassed within 13 overarching design discipline categories. These overarching categories include Built Environment; Communication Design; Concept Design; Design Research; Design Strategy; Digital Design; Engineering Design; Fashion Impact; Next Gen (Under 30s); Policy Design; Product Design; Service Design, and Social Impact.
Within the Built Environment category are four subcategories, including:

Architectural Design: Open to commercial architecture, public architecture and residential architecture projects
Installation Design: Including exhibition design, temporary installation design and experiential design projects
Interior Design: This subcategory encompasses commercial interior, public interior and residential interior projects
Place Design: Open to urban design, landscape architecture, public spaces, precinct design and city planning projects.

The 2024 awards program saw Hurlstone Memorial Reserve Community Centre by Sam Crawford Architects win the Architectural Design division, Glenthorne National Park – Ityamaiitpinna Yarta Nature Playground by TCL, Karl Winda Tefler and Tikana Tefler, and PPA (Architecture) win the Place Design subcategory, and Hidden: Seven Children Saved at Melbourne Holocaust Museum ­by Art Processors win the Installation Design section.
The deadline for entries is 2 May 2025. Judging will take place between May–July, followed by an awards ceremony on 17 October at ICC Sydney. To find out more about the program, visit the Australian Good Design Awards website. More

Melbourne Design Week returns on May 15-25, 2025, with an 11-day program including more than 350 events, exhibitions, talks, and installations showcasing a range of groundbreaking works from both emerging designers and well-established professionals.

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One of the standout features of this year’s festival is 100 Lights, an immersive exhibition held at North Melbourne’s Meat Market Stables. Staged by Friends & Associates, this stunning display will feature lighting designs from over 100 artists, designers, and makers, including Adam Goodrum, Ross Gardam and Tantri Mustika. The exhibition will create a glowing environment, allowing visitors to experience the beauty and innovation of contemporary lighting design.
Another significant exhibition, Siblings Architecture’s Deep Calm, will delve into how architecture can cater to neurodivergent audiences. This exhibition, the result of a year-long research project, will include designs like weighted sofas and tactile rugs, aimed at creating calming environments for individuals with autism spectrum disorder.
Another highlight will be Catch: Tales of First Nations fishing through the Artbank Collection, spotlighting the design ingenuity and legacy of First Nations designers, including Aunty Kim Wandin.

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The festival will also highlight the careers of two Australian designers. Volker Haug, a decorative lighting designer from Stuttgart, Germany, will present a retrospective of his 20-year career in Australia with an exhibition titled 20 Years of Volker Haug Studios. The showcase will trace the evolution of Haug’s design philosophy, blending functionality with artistic expression.
Trent Jansen, renowned for his design anthropology approach, will also celebrate his two-decade milestone with the exhibition Trent Jansen: Two Decades of Design Anthropology. Jansen’s journey from repurposing road signs into furniture to collaborating with First Nations makers will be featured, highlighting his contributions to innovative Australian design.
A significant theme of this year’s festival is the exploration of sustainable design practices. A New Normal, an exhibition at the Boyd Baker House in Bacchus Marsh, will present innovative ideas aimed at making Melbourne a self-sufficient city by 2030, featuring designs and policy recommendations by 12 Melbourne architects.
In addition to the design exhibitions, the Melbourne Art Book Fair (May 15–17) will feature more than 100 publishers from across the Asia-Pacific region, along with pop-up talks and workshops. The festival’s theme of ‘Design the World You Want’ invites all participants to reflect on how their work shapes the future, making Melbourne Design Week a must-see event for design enthusiasts and industry professionals alike.
The full program and bookings will be available online from mid- April 2025 at the Melbourne Design Week website. More