Design Champion
City of Sydney
Prince Alfred Park Pool
Architecture - Mixed - Use - Constructed | Commissioner: City of Sydney | Creator: City of Sydney and Neeson Murcutt Architects with Sue Barnsley Design
Located at the edge of central Sydney, the ambition of the project was to reinvigorate the under-ulitised 7.5 hectare park, and upgrade the tired public pool. The overriding principle was to premiate landscape over built form, based on a conviction that in these inner urban areas, green space is sacred.
Neeson Murcutt Architects with the City of Sydney, have embedded a new 1000m2 pool facilities building as a piece of ‘folded landscape’ with a green roof of native ‘meadow’ grasses by Sue Barnsley Design. In this single move the building disappears from the adjacent street, and is integrated with the rolling park landscape. The building is intimate and monumental (generally 6m deep x 125m long) – scaled to the swimmer and to the city. Blue coloured stripes accentuate the topographic quality of the project by de-emphasizing the distinction between building wall, pool concourse and bleacher seat. The ephemeral fence, yellow umbrellas, blue and white toddler shade structure, over-sized tree-seat, coloured ‘chimneys’, palm trees and mound slide, bestow a playful character. They are the ‘follies’ within the Victorian park. The upgraded pool is the City’s first pool that is fully trigeneration ready, a testament to the City of Sydney’s ambitious sustainability aspirations.
Sydney Laneway Upgrades - Angel Place & Chinatown
Urban Design | Commissioner: City of Sydney | Creator: ASPECT Studios
Angel Place and Chinatown Laneways are two catalytic public space upgrade projects which have lead the City of Sydney’s ongoing Laneway Revitalisation Strategy, a scheme designed to reactivate a number of Sydney’s historically significant laneways through high quality public domain upgrades. ASPECT Studios were engaged by the City of Sydney as lead consultants to undertake the works, which included upgraded streetscapes, traffic reconfigurations to promote active transport and pedestrian priority, and the integration of joyous and thoughtful site specific artworks which manifestly enliven the public environments and add layers of cultural enrichment.
Prince Alfred Park + Pool
Urban Design | Commissioner: City of Sydney | Creator: City of Sydney and Neeson Murcutt Architects with Sue Barnsley Design
Located at the edge of central Sydney, the ambition of the project was to reinvigorate the under-ulitised 7.5 hectare park, and upgrade the tired public pool. The overriding principle was to premiate landscape over built form, based on a conviction that in these inner urban areas, green space is sacred.
The old pool facility building was removed from the middle of the park, allowing the landscape to be visually opened and re-graded, amplifying its distinctive pastoral quality. New activities such as playing courts, fitness hubs, playgrounds, and picnic tables are concentrated along the railway edge and have added life to the park. Pathways choreograph desire lines and shed stormwater to grassy swales for collection and reuse on the park playing field. New plantings and avenues draw on the Victorian love of exotica, while a rolling, grassy topography blurs the park perimeter with an urban grassland ecology. The new pool building is designed as a ‘folded landscape’ with a green roof of native meadow grasses. In this single move the building disappears from the adjacent street, and is embedded into the rolling park landscape. Two crisply shaped landscape mounds define the pool enclosure, simultaneously connecting and separating it and the park. 
Prince Alfred Park + Pool
Landscape Design - Commercial | Commissioner: City of Sydney | Creator: City of Sydney and Neeson Murcutt Architects with Sue Barnsley Design
Located at the edge of central Sydney, the ambition of the project was to reinvigorate the under-ulitised 7.5 hectare park, and upgrade the tired public pool. The overriding principle was to premiate landscape over built form, based on a conviction that in these inner urban areas, green space is sacred.
The old pool facility building was removed from the middle of the park, allowing the landscape to be visually opened and re-graded, amplifying its distinctive pastoral quality. New activities such as playing courts, fitness nodes, playgrounds, and picnic tables are concentrated along the railway edge and have added life to the park. Pathways choreograph desire lines and shed stormwater to grassy swales for collection and reuse on the park playing field. New plantings and avenues draw on the Victorian love of exotica, while a rolling, grassy topography blurs the park perimeter with an urban grassland ecology. The new pool building is designed as a ‘folded landscape’ with a green roof of native meadow grasses. In this single move the building disappears from the adjacent street, and is embedded into the park landscape. Two crisply shaped landscape mounds define the pool enclosure, simultaneously connecting and separating pool and park.
Pitt Street Mall Public Domain
Urban Design | Commissioner: City of Sydney Council | Creator: Tony Caro Architecture
Over 58,000 people pass through Pitt Street Mall on an average summer weekday, retail rents in the Mall are amongst the highest in the world, and yet the public domain had deteriorated due to the prolonged, intensive levels of pedestrian traffic and incessant re-development of the adjacent major retail stores and developments.
The Mall was pedestrianised in the late 1970’s, but continued to have the character of a “paved street” through retention of the original crowned street profile. This project offered an opportunity to re-think the ground-plane of the Mall as a flatter, more “floor-like” surface with the intention of creating a “public room” like quality.
The paving strategy reinforces the width of the mall by utilizing a standard City palette at its edges that transforms to a richer, centralised carpet-runner-like quality arranged in radiating east-west bands, made from a palette of traditional Sydney street stone types.
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