NSW Architecture Award winners revealed

Winners of the 2024 NSW Architecture Awards have been named for the best new residential, commercial and public buildings in the state. The awards represent the changing built environment and offer a look into the ways the state will live, work and play, now and into the future.

A total of 82 winners were chosen from a shortlist of 126 leading New South Wales architectural projects. This year’s various juries undertook one of the biggest regional tours they have ever conducted, visiting the sites of 20 percent of shortlisted projects in their regional areas.

Threads of heritage and sustainability ran through all entries this year, including insightful and adaptive reuses and well-considered renovations and additions. Designs represented deep connections to Country with an intrinsic consideration of culture.

“We see the public interest advanced in the continued rise of projects that seek to reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions of our buildings, requiring less energy to produce, fewer resources to extract, employing timeless passive and active environmental systems,” chair of chairs Tim Horton said in a statement.

Horton recognised the profound contribution to the public good and the interest in mediating between private interests and the public domain across all of the awarded projects. He commended the winning architects for recognising place, memory and the experiences of Aboriginal people on the sites.

Royal Australian Institute of Architects chapter president and national president elect Adam Haddow added: “We have the very best architects in the world in New South Wales, and they are delivering remarkable projects that make the state a better place to be. Great architecture can both elevate the soul and deliver a more resilient future. Sustainability and housing are the two biggest challenges of our age. This year’s awarded projects help show how great the future really is.”

Winners celebrate excellence in design placemaking and sustainability

Among the dozens of categories spanning the competition, there were some standout projects awarded for their relationship with Country. North Head Viewing Platforms by CHROFI and Bangawarra with National Parks and Wildlife Service was one such winner, earning the NSW Medallion. The project, a combination of a northern platform, Yiningma (a cliff edge) and a southern platform, Burragula (the time of sunset), fosters relationships with Country and understands its responsibility to meaningfully engage. It creates poetic and generous ways to share stories of Car-rang-gel (Country now known as North Head), a place that has always been an important ceremonial ground for local peoples.

In celebration of the use of steel, Rosedale House won the Colorbond® Award for Steel Architecture, highlighting the aesthetic and functional power of steel in a bushfire-prone setting. Clad entirely in COLORBOND® Steel’s Manor Red®, the hip-roof profile is an unashamed reference to the modest tin shacks that once lined our coastal towns.

colorbond, steel, award, architecture, commercial, — *Rosedale House won the Colorbond® Award for Steel Architecture*. Photo: Tim Clark Photography

Campbell House Private Office, by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, earned The Sir Arthur G Stephenson Award, setting a precedent for the future of commercial design and a need for the typology to be adaptive, environmentally responsible and communal. Through adaptive reuse and sustainable practices, the building marries historical preservation with forward-thinking design, transforming a Federation-style house into a multi-tenanted contemporary office spaced

sustainable, historical, heritage, office space — *Campbell House Private Office by Tonkin Zulaikha* Greer. Photo: Cieran Murphy

The NSW Award for Educational Architecture was granted to Darlington Public School, by fjcstudio. The design, born out of extensive community consultation, reflects the school’s identity as a community hub with deep connections to Aboriginal culture. It prioritises community accessibility with publicly publicly available facilities such as a community hall, Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA), and library. Sustainability is a core aspect of the design, incorporating passive elements like sawtooth roofs for optimal sunlight exposure, high-level glazing for indirect daylight and curved screens for filtered light.

educational, architecture, school, community, design — *Darlington Public School, by fjcstudio.* Photo: Brett Boardman

Moving inside, Blacktown Exercise and Sports Technology Hub (BEST), by ARM Architecture with CO.OP Studio won the NSW Award for Interior Architecture. Establishing a new standard for a typology that is often protective and closed, BEST Hub greets the community with the contagious energy and joyfulness of dynamic architecture conceptualised around movement and transformation. Bold and curvaceous colourful public spaces are counterbalanced by quite austere and rudimental tenant areas, functional but well connected to the public spaces and natural light.