2024 Australian Urban Design Awards

The Australian Urban Design Awards spotlight the country’s top contemporary urban design projects. The awards highlight the importance of effective design in shaping Australia's built environment.

ASPECT Studios and Taylor Cullity Lethlean with the City of Melbourne have won the award for Leadership, Research & Advocacy – City and Regional Scale at the Australian Urban Design Awards.

The City of Melbourne's Greenline Project is a long-term project that is set to transform Melbourne's riverbank by creating an emblematic new parkland and urban promenade along the north bank.

The project will feed into the ongoing recovery of the CBD by creating an internationally known riverfront experience. Daily life in Melbourne will be fundamentally different, with the 4km long north bank of the Yarra River - Birrarung relinked by a series of ecologically and culturally rich spaces that connect people, the city, and the water.

You can learn more about the project here

ASPECT Studios, BKK Architects, Kyriacou Architects and Jacobs have also received a commendation in the Built Projects – Local and Neighbourhood Scale category at the Urban Design Awards for the Mooroolbark and Lilydale Station Precincts.

These suburban Melbourne train stations reflect the area's history, enhance connectivity, and introduce new public spaces. Situated at the border between urban and rural Melbourne, they draw inspiration from the surrounding landscape, blending seamlessly with the leafy, semi-rural character of the area.

Like other level-crossing removal projects in Melbourne, the Mooroolbark and Lilydale Stations and rail viaducts bring substantial change to the city and its community. Elevating the rails above the roads, they add visual prominence to the streetscape. The key design driver was to minimise the sense of the scale of the built elements through careful spatial zoning, architectural expression, and the use of local materials.

Read more about the project here.

In the Built Projects - City and Regional Scale category, the City of Sydney and Transport for NSW received the top award for George Street, Sydney.

One of the most transformational projects of public life ever undertaken in Sydney, the CBD and South East Light Rail project combines a new mass public transportation system with a 12-kilometre-long linear public domain upgrade that runs through the heart of Sydney.

ASPECT oversaw the transformation of George Street, in collaboration with Grimshaw Architects, creating a tree-lined boulevard free of overhead wires, and the creation of traffic-free pedestrian areas between Hunter and Bathurst Streets. The result is a world-class retail, dining and active movement spine that conducts peoples through the city.

George Street has been returned to pedestrians, and now acts as an active transport spine threading through the centre of the city.

Read more about the project here.