Research
Teaching
UTS School of Architecture
As adjunct professor at the UTS School of Architecture, Mark advises on curriculum, participates in design reviews and convenes selected studios.
Mark is regularly involved in university life. Delivering lectures and teaching design studio.
Publications
Mark's chapter in Nature Driven Urbanism outlines Tyrrell Studio's design process: to map, sieve and reveal new meaning from Sydney's hidden natural and cultural systems.
There are multiple grids that make up the modern city, these are networks of different types. Some, like the power or transport grids exist and are accepted, utilized each day and only questioned when they fail. Some, like the Green Grid are tangible and close to what people know, but are as yet not regarded as essential like power or water. Others like the Ochre Grid or Ecological Grid are barely legible, containing culture and life of the landscape within their deep memory.
There is an opportunity to draw the unseen grids into the tangible experience of place, remaking a deeper connection to country for citizens of modern Sydney. Beyond a simple link or spatial connection, a revived culture of ecological system stewardship and Caring for Country can and should be inspired by the design of the public face of the city.
This idea can be realized only through precise strategic system connectivity at a city scale, linked seamlessly to seductive composition and form at a site scale. This proposition outlines a design process Tyrrell Studio are developing.
This process organizes city scale grids with clarity through sieving and thinning of mega spatial data, whilst at the same time thickening the layers of the meaning of landscape through collage, overlay and citizen engagement. Surfaced through this process are possible connection points between site and system to catalyse major urban and cultural transformation.
Interviews
Disappearing act: Long Reef Surf Life Saving Club Courtyard
Tyrrell Studio’s design for a new surf life saving club in the north of Sydney creates spaces for community gathering while blurring the line between building and beach.
Dynamism and flux: Tyrrell Studio
Tyrrell Studio’s expanding folio of public realm projects reads as an “open-source code book,” with heavily researched projects that trade fanfare for broader change.
Parkland visions: Designing the Western Sydney Aerotropolis
If the Western Sydney Aerotropolis is to deliver on its economic promises, this major development must attract residents, workers and visitors – and a landscape-led approach has much to offer.
Diepsloot slum upgrade by Global Studio
Diepsloot in Johannesburg was established in 1995 as a temporary transit camp and is now home to 160,000 people. For its special Connecting People and Place issue, Landscape Architecture Australia caught up with Mark Tyrrell of Global Studio, who worked closely with residents, community groups and local government to help improve daily life for Diepsloot residents.
Ten emerging voices in Australian landscape architecture
Today’s graduates and young practitioners face very different challenges to the generation before them. What contribution will they make over the next fifty years? The following people have been selected because they represent a wide cohort of engaged landscape architects and collaborators facing contemporary issues with eyes wide open.
Listen to Mark’s interview on ABC Radio after winning the AILA National Award of Excellence for Parks and Open Space in June 2020
Recent Journal Articles
Unbuilding Utopia
With our cities changing more rapidly than ever before, especially post-pandemic, we face complex design problems that are larger than one building or one solution. Unbuilt work, says Mark Tyrrell, has the ability to link spatial visioning in a new way with the complex social, political and cultural reality of the evolving city.
Competitions
We use design competitions to explore ideas and test new research. Some of our winning entries have resulted in productive client relationships, providing the opportunity to further develop the ideas and test them in practice. We are continually searching for catalyst projects to challenge the status quo and demonstrate new thinking.
Design Competition Winning Projects:
Winner: University of Canberra Campus Design Competition
Winner: Moorabbin Junction Melbourne Design Competition (pictured above)
Winner: Parramatta City ‘Ideas on Edge’ Design Competition
Winner: AILA National Unbuilt Work Competition
Interested in learning more about about Tyrrell Studio? Get in touch