From car parks to piers: the 2026 Australian Urban Design awards recognise a gentler approach to pragmatic projects | Australia news
Sydney’s Campbelltown paved the paradise and built a parking lot. And the intrepid jury of the Australian Urban Design awards declared it perfect.
The winners of the 2026 awards, announced at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday, suggest that the era of the star architect’s unique, sculptural spectacle has been replaced, this year at least, by something more pragmatic: a modest revolution where the most important breakthroughs are found in a heart full of natural, open-mesh ventilation, a riot of color and soothing greenery.
The Campbelltown station commuter car park, designed by Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, is more than just car infrastructure, an Australian Institute of Architects jury has concluded. Winner of one of three awards in the built results category, the project is a generous, resilient and unexpectedly refreshing example of civic design. A part of paradise has been regained.
It’s as if the architects decided that the Campbelltown project was a chance to inject some civic dignity into a structure that sits just above the sewage treatment plant in the usual hierarchy of urban needs.
“This year’s winners reflect a softer approach to urban regeneration,” said award board chair Katherine Sundermann.
“These projects reinforce a simple idea: Urban renewal works best when it involves different people, responds to the characteristics of place, and improves places over time.”
On Melbourne’s waterfront, another utilitarian project has been elevated above the ordinary.
The redevelopment of the St Kilda pier, a collaboration between Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, Site Office Landscape Architecture and AW Maritime, has added an interesting extension to the Port Philip Bay landmark, which began life as a simple wooden pier in the 1850s and was transformed into a functional concrete pier in the 1970s.
The aging infrastructure has been replaced by a wider, curved design that balances heavy-duty engineering with the site’s role as a major tourist draw.
The jury praised the project for its “layered embrace” of the bay, noting that technical requirements had been translated into public assets.
Built to prevent the sea from breaching the pier, the undulating wall also serves as a sculptural concrete seat.
The jury said it was a rare example of how to balance coastal protection with recreation and protect the habitat of the colony of fairy penguins that have called the breakwater home for the last 50 years.
Named after the Woi-wurrung word for butterfly, Balam Balam Place is a living metaphor for transformation in the heart of Brunswick, lifting the cocoon of its colonial past and re-emerging as a vibrant cultural landscape.
The jury praised the building’s “sense of deliberate incompleteness” and its function as a bridge between the profound times of its traditional owners and the formal 19th-century architecture that once sought to define it.
The Victorian schoolhouse still forms the basis of the site, but the renovation honors the multi-layered history of the inner-city Melbourne suburb.
The Australian urban design awards are jointly organized by the Australian Planning Institute, the Australian Institute of Architects and the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.
The 2026 awards program attracted more than 80 entries across four categories: built outcomes, research and advocacy, strategic design and policy, and recognition of the work of individual urban designers and architects.
The New South Wales government was recognized in the strategic design and policy category for its groundbreaking housing model book; The jury said this book sets an ambitious agenda for modest, flexible and affordable urban living, ensuring that design quality is not compromised in the name of modern planning pathways to accelerate completion.
They said it was an “open democratic” initiative shaped by local and international designers and accessible to individual landowners, small builders and large developers.
The judges acknowledged that, while not a complete cure for the housing crisis, the model book was an important step towards housing communities with dignity as Australian cities transition to denser and more sustainable lifestyles.
