Prince Alfred Park + Pool Upgrade
2014 AIA National Architecture Awards: Walter Burley Griffin Award for Urban Design
2014 AIA National Award for Public Architecture
2014 AIA NSW Sulman Medal for Public Architecture
2014 AIA NSW Lloyd Rees Award for Urban Design
2014 City of Sydney Lord Mayor’s Prize
2014 PIA Australia Award for Urban Design
2014 Good Design Awards (Best In Architecture + Interiors)
2013 AILA NSW Medal for Landscape Architecture
2013 Sydney Design Awards (Architecture Mixed use)
2013 WAF High Commendation (Landscape)
2013 CCAA State Award
2013 CIA NSW High Commendation
Located at the edge of central Sydney, the project reinvigorates the under-ulitised 7.5ha park, and upgrades 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 building was removed from the middle of the park, allowing the landscape to be visually opened. The park is given a new spatial and ecological sensibility without erasing its Victorian roots. New activities concentrated along the railway edge shareway, have added life to the park. The new 1000m2 pool building is designed as a piece of ‘folded landscape’ with a green roof of native ‘meadow’ grasses that embeds it into the park. The building – 6m deep, 120m long – is intimate and monumental, scaled to the swimmer and to the city. Two crisply shaped landscape mounds define the space of the outdoor pool enclosure, simultaneously connecting and separating park and pool. Blue coloured stripes further accentuate the topographic quality providing continuity between building wall, concourse and bleacher. The ephemeral fence, yellow umbrellas, toddler shade structure, over-sized tree-seat, coloured trigeneration chimneys, palm trees and mound slide, bestow a playful character – ‘follies’ within the Victorian park. The project was design for the City of Sydney with Sue Barnsley Design as landscape architect.
Featured in:
Architecture Australia vol.105 no.2
Architectural Review Asia Pacific Issue 143
Vimeo video screening at the National Architecture Awards, 2014
Architecture AU, 2014
Architecture Australia vol.103 no.6
The Australian: Wish, 2014
The Canberra Times, 2014
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014
The Australian Financial Review, 2014
The Saturday Paper, 2014
Architecture and Design, 2014
Architizer, 2014
Architecture AU Source: Landscape Architecture Australia Feb 2014 Issue 141
The Monocle 100 special supplement of the Dec/Jan 2013/14 issue of Monocle Architecture Australia vol.102 no.5
Architecture Culture Issue 388
South Sydney Herald, 2013
Design 100, 2013
Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia: Public Domain Awards 2013
Australian Institute of Landscape Architecture NSW Awards 2013
In Praise of Process: Exhibition, 2009
Urban Innovation Homes, 2009
Abundant Australia Venice Biennale pamphlet 2008
Abundant Australia Venice Biennale catalogue 2008
Architecture Australia vol.97 no.5