PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE
Projects in this category must be predominantly of a public or institutional nature generally falling within BCA Class 9. However, this category does not include projects falling within the definition of Educational Architecture or any BCA Class 9b building used primarily for educational purposes.
2025 WINNERS
The Sulman Medal for Public Architecture
Jury Citation:
Yarilla Place redefines the idea of what it means to be a public building.
The building is anchored to an enormous fig and tied to a through-site-link that invites movement between a large public carpark and the town centre. Extraordinary levels of enlivenment are achieved by a free-form staircase set in a five-level, open-air atrium, the heart of a spatially dynamic composition.
Like a trifle made to the cook’s whim, BVN have taken all the ingredients of a civic hub—library, gallery, museum, makerspace, civic offices and chambers, and more—and layered them with deliberate unpredictability. Proportions, adjacencies and stackings defy conventions. The result is a building that surprises without disorienting, that feels generous, intuitive, and alive.
Ascending, you encounter spaces that are both intimate and social, set against a constant rhythm of public movement, staff exchanges, and casual encounters. The form resists repetition—no formula, no rigid grid—just a thoughtful mirror of the diverse Indigenous and migrant communities who use it.
The material palette says as much as the spatial one. A grounded brick base gives way to deep-green ceramic panels above—curved and glazed like leaves—moderating climate and respectfully nodding to the big fig.
Award for Public Architecture
Jury Citation:
The Allan Border Oval Pavilion is a thoughtful, hardworking, and well-detailed community building, that sits sensitively in its landscape setting. It has a functional and flexible layout, enabling the spaces to be used by multiple different groups at different times of the day. The pavilion roof sits as a canopy, with wide, generous eaves and a clever structural solution that enables a column-free experience adjacent to the oval, maximising views from the grandstand. It is designed to be visually recessive, with a palette that is durable with timber, concrete and steel, and with finishes to maintain the primacy of the natural setting in which it sits.
This is a great example of a community building: rational in its planning and beautiful in its design detailing. The building is carefully sited and creates a series of high amenity spaces both inside and out for use by the whole community.
Award for Public Architecture
Jury Citation:
The modifications to the Pyrmont Community Centre commence with a robust but highly detailed presentation of the entry with an expressive and meticulously executed facade that allows engagement into the building, while delivering natural light deep into the spaces within. A newly organised and glazed circulation zone serves to offset the new spaces respectfully from the original structures while seamlessly and intuitively connecting the various functions within the centre. A rich material palette develops within, with each space afforded its own identifying composition to suit the functions accommodated.
The result is a design that is as much about the careful restoration and remediation to the original 1880s buildings, as it is the careful interventions that overlay new and exciting spaces that exceed the community expectations for a modern community centre.
COMMENDATIONS -
2025 JURY
Throughout the Years - AWARD ARCHIVE
The Sulman Medal
National Partners
