Sustainability, heritage and boundary-pushing were this year’s winners of the National Architecture Awards
Sustainable design, adaptive reuse and boundary-pushing use of materials stood out as winning favourites at this year’s National Architecture Awards.
The Institute of Architects selected 35 winning projects out of a shortlist of 62, spread across each state and territory and overseas. The institute said that these new residential, community and commercial buildings “represent a new vanguard of Antipodean design” that is innovative and creates “lasting impacts on communities.”
According to Jury Chair Stuart Tanner, themes such as connection to Country, use of highly sustainable materials such as Hempcrete, adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and reinvention of commonplace products and materials such as terracotta and masonry were favourably regarded.
“It is a modern architectural proverb that the most sustainable building is the one that is already built,” Tanner said.
“Many architects also took abandoned urban land and transformed it into hard-working medium-density housing.”
There was “much to inspire as we seek ways to increase the density of our cities to accommodate growing populations and the ongoing housing crisis,” Tanner said.
“Awarded projects show us that public buildings with utilitarian purposes need not be perfunctory. Architects have created unexpectedly beautiful and sophisticated public buildings that transcend their practical purposes – such as storage.
“On a related note, with building material costs skyrocketing, many architects have elevated low-cost materials to produce innovative and inspirational design outcomes in a time of economic hardship.”
Winners include Powerhouse Place by Public Realm Lab in Millewa-Mallee Country, Victoria, which took out the National Award for Sustainable Architecture. The jury said:
Powerhouse Place by Public Realm Lab combines social and environmental sustainability in a conceptually sophisticated and highly skilled series of design moves, contributing to the regeneration of both site and community in Mildura.
While reusing and adapting the existing Powerhouse, the project looked to actively recast the settler-colonial extractive history that this building embodies – employing strategies of addition, subtraction and reuse. The resulting building is a fine composition of hard-working public spaces, but also a model of strategic advocacy.
As Powerhouse Place includes the first use of hempcrete in a public building in Australia, the jury was particularly impressed with the project’s attempts to support the regional development of the hemp industry, and the uptake of this sustainable material through building the supply chain.
Even as these ambitions may not yet be fully realised, they underscore the role that architects can play in moving “upstream” – helping develop products and markets for sustainable materials in the built environment more broadly.
By reimagining Mildura’s relationship with the Murray River, Powerhouse Place is not only a space for tourists, but one that also invites locals to come together in new ways – in processes of community gathering, celebration and truth-telling that have already been, by all accounts, transformative.
Winning The Harry Seidler Award for Commercial Architecture, the institute said of the project:
T3 Collingwood was a demonstration of how architectural mastery can achieve authenticity for a commercial building in an urban setting. The building was the result of a client and architect who had the collaborative aim to achieve ambitious social, sustainability and community targets, the judges said.
“The architecture prioritises urban design appropriateness over artifice. Outwardly it thoughtfully employs scale, material and composition to acknowledge the existing historic brick industrial context of Collingwood.
“The architects investigated multiple building envelope strategies to provide civic-minded engagement at street level, revealing previously concealed historical context while still achieving necessary commercial imperatives.
“Internally the building achieves ambitious sustainability targets and adopts biophilic principles to generate an innovative commercial tower environment.”
The tower floor plates create employee-centric workplace environments, which possess a calming, tactile quality unique in office tower environments. These workspaces are the result of careful curation of mass-timber construction methodology and structural grid tectonics.
A high level of architectural rigour and collaborative expertise has yielded a building that achieves best-practice sustainability targets via innovative mass-timber construction. This building is progressive and authentic at once.
Tonkin Zulaikha Greer won the David Oppenheim Award for Sustainable Architecture for Campbell House Private Office, New South Wales.
“With Campbell House Private Office, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer has extended and adapted a grand heritage house into a fresh, comfortable and functional office space with excellent sustainability credentials – including the concept of ‘new energy from old buildings’.
A superstructure of “solar blades” supports an extensive array of photovoltaic panels above a central glass atrium roof – lighting all of the indoor spaces and turning what could have been a clunky overhead frame into an intriguing and appealing horizontal shade structure.
“This array produces significant battery-stored energy for the building and its fleet of electric vehicles.”
The building has conditioned office and meeting spaces around the perimeter, and a naturally-ventilated gathering space with associated break-out areas in the centre.
The jury visited on a very cold day and found the central space bright and warm, and the building suffused with a sense of calm industriousness. The most striking feature of the interior is the indoor tree – a weeping fig that has evidently taken to its new environment with great enthusiasm, the judges said.
In addition to the recognised air cleaning benefits of vegetation, the tree provides a visual and symbolic focal point in the centre of a new multi-purpose ground floor gathering space, where diverse staff of the diverse business activities within the building can collect for events and functions.
The juxtaposition is intriguing: an office replete with high-tech active environmental systems, partially housed in an 1890s heritage house, also harbours one of the most ancient, living, passive shading organisms known to the world.
The integration of these layers of history and technology illustrates the skill of the designers. Equally, the space is not without moments of sumptuousness – the traditional sash window set into a wall of clear glass bricks; the stainless-steel mesh curtain shrouding the sweeping curved glass of the front stairwell.
As a building that carefully pursues sustainability objectives through the reuse of existing fabric and materials, energy generation, water management, landscaping and natural ventilation, the project is also an exemplar of design inventiveness and rich spatial quality in a fully integrated whole.”
2024 National Architecture Awards:
Steel Architecture
- Spinifex Hill Project Space by Officer Woods | WA
Commercial Architecture
- T3 Collingwood by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects | VIC
- The Warehouses by J.AR OFFICE | QLD
- The Porter House Hotel by Candalepas Associates | NSW
- Sanders Place by NMBW, Openwork & Finding Infinity | VIC
Educational Architecture
- River’s Edge Building, University of Tasmania by Wardle | TAS
- Clifton Hill Primary School by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects | VIC
- The Cottage School by Taylor and Hinds Architects | TAS
Enduring Architecture
- C House by Donovan Hill | QLD
- The Glass House by Cracknell & Lonergan Architects | NSW
- The Porter House Hotel by Candalepas Associates | NSW
Interior Architecture
- Burnt Earth Beach House by Wardle | VIC
- Geelong Arts Centre (Stage 3) by ARM Architecture | VIC
- Cox Architecture Adelaide Studio by Cox Architecture | SA
International Architecture
- The Embassy of Australia, Washington DC by Bates Smart | INT
Public Architecture
- Powerhouse Castle Hill by lahznimmo architects | NSW
- Spinifex Hill Project Space by Officer Woods | WA
- Parramatta Aquatic Centre by Grimshaw and Andrew Burges Architects with McGregor Coxall | NSW
- Berninneit Cultural and Community Centre by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects | VIC
Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations & Additions)
- High Street by Lineburg Wang | QLD
- Aru House by Curious Practice | NSW
- Mansard House by Studio Bright | VIC
Residential Architecture – Houses (New)
- Naples Street House by Edition Office | VIC
- Burnt Earth Beach House by Wardle | VIC
- Six Ways House by Kennedy Nolan | VIC
Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing
- Ferrars & York by Six Degrees Architects | VIC
- Nungalinya by Incidental Architecture | NT
- Maggie Street by Curious Practice | NSW
Small Project Architecture
- North Head Viewing Platforms by CHROFI and Bangawarra with National Parks and Wildlife Service | NSW
- Dwaarlindjirraap Suspension Bridge by iredale pedersen hook architects and ARUP | WA
- LESS by Pezo Von Ellrichshausen, Oculus, and Molonglo | ACT
Sustainable Architecture
- Campbell House Private Office by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer | NSW
- Powerhouse Place by Public Realm Lab | VIC
Urban Design
- Parramatta Aquatic Centre by Grimshaw and Andrew Burges Architects with McGregor Coxall | NSW
- Powerhouse Place by Public Realm Lab | VIC