Architecture

The winners of the 17th annual 2024 Architeam Awards have been named, with the winning and commended projects highlighting a commitment to flexibility, sustainability and inclusive design for multigenerational families.
Equity Office’s Wangun Amphitheatre claimed the prestigious Architeam Medal and took out the Commercial, Community and Public Award. The 8-person strong jury selected the project from a shortlist of 33 projects. They lauded the project for its accessibility and all-weather attirbutes, being the first self-determined cultural venue for the Gunakurnai communities.
The winners are:
Architeam Medal Winner
Wangun Amphitheatre – Equity Office
Sustainability Medal Winner
Life Cycle – Steffen Welsch Architects
Small Project Medal
Mackellar Primary School, Accessible Playground – Architecture Architecture
Residential New Award – up to $1.2 million
Winner
Mount Macedon House – Ben Lance Architects
Commendations
Little More House – MEGA
Life Down a Lane – Tom Robertson Architects
Forest Road House – Wiesebrock Architecture
Residential New Award – above $1.2 million
Commendations
Gable House – Weaver and Co Architects
Tea House – Krisna Cheung Architects
Residential Alterations and Additions – up to $700,000
Winner

Little Brick Cottage – Perversi-Brooks Architects
Commendations

Park St House – Michael Ong Design Office
Bob’s Bungalow – Blair Smith Architecture
Brunswick West House – Nardel Architects
Residential Alterations and Additions – between $700,000 and $1.2 million
Winner
Hale Street – Philip Stejskal Architecture
Commendations
Marriane House – Victoria Merrett Architecture
Residential Alterations and Additions – over $1.2 million
Commendation
Skygarden – Architecture Architecture
Commercial, Community and Public Award
Winner
Wangun Amphitheatre – Equity Office
Commendations
Mackellar Primary School, Accessible Playground – Architecture Architecture
Milanote Headquarters – Fowler and Ward
People’s Choice Award
Heritage Streetscape Primary School – Jacinda Sadler Architects
Passivhaus Scholarship

Shauna Trengrove of Linden Thorley Architects – The Keep Cup of Opportunity More

The Swayn Gallery of Australian Design and the University of Canberra have jointly announced the winners of its Swayn 2024 Student Competition.
The late Canberra architect Alastair Swayn left his estate to fund Australian design research, including the Swayn Student Competition for design students at the University of Canberra.
The 2024 edition of the competition invited emerging design professionals to consider how – through their chosen field – they might contribute to the sustainability of and innovation in Australia’s urban environment. Guided by a theme of Transformations, participants were tasked with creating new opportunities for “play” and “performance” on the shores of Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin to explore how design interventions can initiate transformation.
The jury comprised Annabelle Pegrum of The Swayn Gallery of Australian Design (jury chair); Ben Walker of Ben Walker Architects; Anna Chauvel of Place Laboratory; Professor Emeritus Bill Green of the University of Canberra; Rebecca Sorenson of the National Capital Authority; and Georgia Stynes of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Josiah Alderic was named the overall winner of the competition for a scheme titled The Natural and Unnatural. The jury commented that it was “particularly impressed by the philosophical underpinning of the proposition,” which resulted in a “successful juxtaposition of the urban built condition of Lake Burley Griffin with a new natural landform and ecology that would grow and transform over time.
“This juxtaposition of the natural and unnatural explores several cross-cutting environmental issues in the built environment, including social access, green infrastructure and natural heritage. […] Quite significantly the design, subtly and skilfully extends the contextual appreciation of Lake Burley Griffin and hints at the natural backstory of the Molonglo River.
“The Natural and Unnatural has a conceptual base that the jury considered ensured its transferability to any edge around Lake Burley Griffin. More importantly it is a beautifully represented, well resolved scheme, demonstrating the power of the ‘proposition’ to inform the design process from idea to resolution.”
In addition to the overall winner, six schemes were awarded across four categories – including The Abstraction, Interior Design, Industrial Design and Architecture – and four received commendations. The overall winner earned a $4,000 prize, while several $1,000 prizes were awarded to schemes that were considered exemplary in one of each category.
The results for the Swayn 2024 Student Competition are as follows:
Overall winner
Josiah Alderic – The Natural and Unnatural
Schemes Awarded
The Abstraction
Mayumi Mikaela Esteves, Chelsea McKinnon – Metamorphosis
Interior Design
Bo Li – The Link
Industrial Design
Hugo Manka – Vertigo Park
Lily Bilston – Territory Games
Architecture
Samual Heinsohn – Stepping Stones Theatre
Emily Larkin – Lumin Loops
Commendations
Sarah Brown, Anna Rodwell, Pandanus West – The Spin
Jye Berry, Melanie Wai – Melodic Suspension of Time
Mikhala Beaumont – Flowing Forms
Danielle Williams – Garden City – Clockwork Play More

The winners of the Australian Institute of Architects 2025 New South Wales Regional Architecture Awards and 2025 Newcastle Architecture Awards have been announced.
The results for both awards programs went live on 15 November, revealing High Tide House by Ware Architects in Brunswick Heads as the winner of the James Barnet Award in the 2025 NSW Regional Architecture Awards and New Castle by Anthony St John Parsons as the winner of the Newcastle Medallion in the 2025 Newcastle Architecture Awards.
Winners and commendations of both programs have been listed below.
The 2025 New South Wales Regional Architecture Awards:
James Barnet Award
High Tide House – Ware Architects
Interior Architecture
Commendation
Yukari House – Tanev Muir Architects
Residential Architecture – Houses (New)
Awards
High Tide House – Ware Architects
House in the Dry – MRTN Architects
Rosedale House – Scale Architecture
Commendations
Brahminy House – HGA Studio
House Nabiac – Nicholas Flatman Architecture
Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations and Additions)
Award
House in Narrawallee – Architect George
Commendation
Yukari House – Tanev Muir Architects
Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing
Award
Cedar on Collins – Kennedy Associates Architects
Heritage Architecture
Commendation
Sadlier Residence – Source Architects
Small Project Architecture
Award
Wallabies Watch – StudioMODA
Timber Award
High Tide House – Ware Architects

View gallery

The 2025 Newcastle Architecture Award-winners include:
Newcastle Medallion
New Castle – Anthony St John Parsons
Interior Architecture
Award
New Castle – Anthony St John Parsons
Residential Architecture – Houses (New)
Awards
New Castle – Anthony St John Parsons
Throsby House – Curious Practice
Commendations
Speers Point House – OVDA Studio
Killcare Heights Escarpment House – Matt Thitchener Architect
Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations and Additions)
Award
Window, window, window – Panov Scott
Commendation
Stockton Link House – Sarah Truscott Architect
Colorbond Award for Steel Architecture
Commendation

Killcare Heights Escarpment House – Matt Thitchener Architect More

City of Perth is accepting expressions of interests from independent design, architecture and planning experts to join its Design Review Panel.
The panel – comprising qualified and experienced built environment professionals – is responsible for reviewing and determining the outcome of significant development applications, as well as providing independent advice on the design quality of proposals. The panel oversees significant development applications in the areas of Central Perth, West Perth, Nedlands and Crawley, Northbridge, East Perth and Claisebrook.
Candidates can now express their interest for joining the City of Perth Design Review Panel between the period of 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2026.
Application review sessions will be held monthly at Perth’s Council House, for which panel members will be remunerated to attend. Up to six panel members will be selected for each session based on their expertise and availability.
Panel members are sought from a range of disciplines including, but not limited to:

Architecture
Heritage architecture
Landscape architecture
Land tenure and strata titling
Planning
Sustainability and environmental design
Transport planning
Urban design

Candidates will be assessed in terms of their professional qualifications, expertise and experience. The successful candidate will be able to critically analyse and provide feedback on complex design quality issues.
To view the expression of interest criteria, visit the City of Perth website. The application portal closes on 2 December 2024. More

The Tarrawarra Museum of Art, located in Melbourne’s Yarra Valley, has unveiled plans for a new cultural hub set to open in March 2025. The project has been designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA) in collaboration with landscape architect Oculus, and Wurundjeri horticulturalist and artist Craig Murphy-Wandin.
Named in honour of the museum’s founding patrons, Eva and Marc Besen, who donated over 600 artworks to establish the permanent collection, the new centre will join a collection of architecturally-significant structures on the site, including KTA’s own cellar door, completed in 2016.
Situated adjacent to the existing museum designed by Allan Powell, the new 2,200-square-metre Eva and Marc Besen Centre will house more than 300 of the museum’s works along 64 art storage racks. The centre’s 46-metre secure glass wall will allow the public to view a curation of these stored works year-round.
Kerstin Thompson, director of KTA, described this gesture as an innovative approach to revealing the museum’s treasures. “Back of house is now front of house for everyone to enjoy,” she said.
Thompson noted that the architectural concept for the centre was driven by the museum’s commitment to “fostering artistic exploration, cultural enrichment and intellectual engagement.” The centre’s flexible and adaptable spaces are designed to host a diverse range of activities for all ages, including exhibitions, educational workshops, talks, lectures, performances, classical music concerts and live arts events, accommodating gatherings of up to 200 attendees.
The Eva and Marc Besen Centre will connect to the museum via a new sculpture walk, which will feature sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection by artists Clement Meadmore, Lenton Parr, Robert Klippel and Antony Gormley.
Oculus associate director Claire Martin said that the approach to landscape design “was underpinned by a desire to create a dramatic arrival and entry experience, through a sequence of framed views through, to and beyond the sculptural wall.”
“The design acknowledges and looks to celebrate the site’s rich Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung culture, broader landscapes and the resilience of natural systems,” she said.
The new centre is set to open 8 March 2025 and will be joined by a weekend program of activities. Throughout the month, the Tarrawarra Museum of Art will host behind-the-scenes tours of the new centre. More

A fresh lineup of summer events are scheduled to take place at Tadao Ando’s MPavilion 10 in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens between 21 November 2024 and 22 March 2025.
This marks the second season of events hosted at this particular pavilion, after City of Melbourne granted the Naomi Milgrom Foundation’s request to prolong the duration for which the temporary structure could remain in the gardens to June 2025. The previous nine MPavilion installations were dismantled after a summer season of programming and relocated elsewhere.
The program for season 11 has been thoughtfully curated by the newly formed Curatorial Collective, a cross-disciplinary group of eight creative practitioners based in Melbourne, including Bradley Kerr, Kate Davis, Bron Belcher, Martina Copley, Harry Shang Lun Lee, Britt Devlin, Zya Kane and Eliki Reade. Each event fits into one of three overarching themes: Home Ground, Building Blocks and Every Living Thing.
Here, ArchitectureAu rounds up the top architecture and design events:

Sunday 1 December 2024
MPavilion’s eighth annual Blakitecture forum features a yarn between the creative directors of the 2025 Australia Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Jack Gillmer, Emily McDaniel and Michael Mossman join moderator Bradley Kerr to share insights on the vision and design intent behind their exhibition Home, which will be debuted in Venice in May 2025. The concept is highly participatory, allowing visitors to storytell their understandings of home through the lens of Country.

View gallery

Tuesday 3 December 2024
This event, held on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, features a comprehensive panel discussion focused on accessibility in Melbourne. The objective of the conversation is to promote a deeper understanding of the challenges many individuals encounter while navigating the city and the progress that is being made with inclusive design and planning. Prior to the event, a group of participants will travel from Flinders Street Station to the pavilion, treating the route as a live case study and gathering accessibility insights as they go. Their experiences and observations will help to spark real-time conversations during the panel.

Wednesday 4 December 2024
This talk led by Caroline Bos, co-founder and principal urban planner at UNStudio, looks at inclusive design through a series of personal lenses. The panel will be informed by a series of “urban explorations” – one-on-one sessions where Bos will be guided through Melbourne by people from diverse backgrounds who will help her connect to city through their eyes. These experiences will form foundations for wide-ranging discussions about the ways lived experience can inform inclusive urban design. There will also be an informal post-panel Q&A where attendees can keep adding to the topics and pushing the discussion forward.

Tuesday 10 December 2024
An expert panel explores how to design homes and communities that support older people’s autonomy and quality of life while mitigating the risks that can arise in institutional care models. The discussion features insights from architect Ana Sá, landscape architect and horticultural consultant Tim Mitchell, design anthropologist Miguel Gomez Hernandez, and independent living resident Maggie Moran. Key topics include the role of design in prolonging independence and greater quality of life, as well as the impact of cultural attitudes towards ageing on current urban models.

Wednesday 11 December 2024
A conversation between heritage experts who specialise in different fields of heritage conservation will explore the varying forms of heritage that can exist within a specific location. The dialogue will first focus on the intertwined First Nations, colonial and natural heritage embedded in Queen Victoria Gardens, before expanding to discuss heritage on a city scale. As the sun begins to set, the internal geometries of the pavilion will become a canvas for Belgrade-born architect, researcher and curator Milica Božić’s immersive light installation. It’s a work that creatively adapts the same light detection and ranging technology used in geological mapping to trace the familiar details of the pavilion and project those details back in new ways. More

A development application for Kings Bay Village in Sydney has been lodged following a design excellence competition that saw architecture practice Turner, in conjunction with Arcadia Landscape Architecture, being awarded the project.
The design competition invited architecture and design practices to submit concepts for a new residential and mixed-used precinct in a former industrial area between Parramatta Road, William Street and Queens Road in Five Dock. Participants of the competition were required to expand on a precinct masterplan that was developed by Canada Bay Council in 2021.
The proposed precinct comprises six buildings, varying in height from 14 to 31 storeys. These structures are designed to accommodate residential units (with a portion dedicated to affordable housing), hospitality offerings, retail spaces and co-working areas.
According to the development application, each building features a podium and tower massing. Although each structure is distinct in terms of form, materiality and dimensions, they share a cohesive character that draws inspiration from the industrial context of the site.

View gallery

“The architecture speaks to the rich history of the industrial and warehousing uses in the area, and takes inspiration from the vernacular of the local brick facades, fenestration and roof profiles,” said Turner director James McCarthy.
Plans state that a pedestrian-friendly network of laneways would be established throughout the site, along with a large, new public park at the corner of William Street and Queens Road. Building lobbies have been strategically positioned along street frontages to facilitate wayfinding and contribute to passive surveillance in and around public spaces.
The State Significant Development Application is on exhibition until 12 December 2024. More

The NSW government has revealed the winning designs of the state’s Pattern Book Design Competition, targeting templates for innovative and adaptable homes. Six designs, comprising three terraces and three mid-rise apartments, have been selected from a shortlist of 12 proposals.
In the professional category, the terrace winners are:

Housing is a Verb – a collaborative team including Other Architects, NMBW Architecture Studio and Tarn – NSW and Vic
Officer Woods Architects with Jennie Officer, University of Western Australia – WA

View gallery

In the student category:

In Common Studio – Madeleine Gallagher, Poppy Brown, Kangyun Kim, Paris Perry, John Suh and Catherine Taylor from The University of Sydney, NSW

View gallery

In the professional category, the mid-rise apartment winners are:

Andrew Burges Architects – NSW
Neeson Murcutt Neille, Finding Infinity and Monash Urban Lab – NSW and Vic
Spacecraft Architects – New Zealand

View gallery

According to a media communique from the state government, “The winning designs were picked because of their accessibility, adaptability to changing lifestyle needs, affordability and environmental sustainability.”
“They respond to the unique Australian climate, including a focus on indoor and outdoor living and how to incorporate shade and ventilation,” the statement reads.
Chaired by NSW government architect Abbie Galvin, the five-person jury comprised architect, urban designer and 2024 gold medallist Philip Thalis; 2024 AIA National Emerging Architect Prize winner Jennifer McMaster; architect and Indigenous spatial expert Michael Mossman, and international architect Paul Karakusevic, based in the UK.

View gallery

Galvin commented, “The architects behind the six entries stood out from a tough field of architects from Australia and around the world with their thoughtful, innovative and well-integrated designs.”
“The homes in their designs will enhance living standards, be an asset to our neighbourhoods and can be readily adopted across NSW,” she said.
All five professional winners will work with the government architect to refine the designs for inclusion within the NSW Housing Pattern Book, which is expected to launch in mid-2025. The Pattern Book will provide the public access to the designs, which will be accepted within a streamlined planning approval pathway.

View gallery

According to minister for planning and public spaces Paul Scully, the Pattern Book and fast-track DA process will go a long way to reintroduce variety within Australian housing, in which “we have less housing diversity today than we did 100 years ago.”
The designs will be constructed on five state-owned sites from Homes NSW, Landcom and Sydney Olympic Park Authority, allowing the public to experience the projects first-hand.
The public is also invited to vote for their favourite design on the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure website. The most popular proposal from the winning designs will be announced early 2025. More