What we do
We partner with you at all project scales, from the strategic design of cities and ecosystems through to the detailed design and delivery of public space.
Our practice sits between landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, sculpture, environmental planning, ecology, and global development, reflecting our comprehensive and holistic approach to urbanism.
Mega-scale blue green infrastructure networks for evolving cities and a changing climate
Plan. Frame. Visualise.
A successful Blue Green Infrastructure strategy requires more than a spatial plan. The strategy should be a useful tool, calibrated to the specifics of its place, users and planning context.
Greater Sydney Green Grid
In 2016, the NSW Government Architect and the Greater Sydney Commission asked us to develop the strategic vision for the Sydney Green Grid into a spatial framework. This involved collating extensive collections of GIS data and ground-truthing many projects with all local councils so they could be embedded into Sydney’s district plans. In 2018, we were engaged to develop the Green Grid Spatial Framework with a delivery methodology (the Green Grid GIS Dataset) to help government agencies coordinate green infrastructure projects across the Sydney Basin.
Winner of the 2020 AILA NSW Award of Excellence for Planning
The Western Parkland City Landscape Led Design
This project harnessed the potential of blue green infrastructure to lay out Sydney’s newest city, the Western Sydney Aerotropolis. In the six months before statutory instruments were created, Our aspirational city plan made its way to the very top of government – a Parkland City laid out around a connected system of blue and green infrastructure, designed with respect for Country. Although never made public, the plan was translated into guidelines, the SEPP and DCP, that influenced politicians and inspired precinct planners to promote a type of urbanism not seen since Griffin’s plan for Canberra – one led by landscape architecture. A design that respects rather than degrades Country and its natural systems.
Winner of the 2022 AILA National Award of Excellence for Landscape Planning
Design-led strategy across government, with community and other professionals
Listen. Respect. Collaborate.
Great collaborations begin and end with an attitude of respect and a willingness to listen. We use design as a tool to inspire new thinking, spark conversations, test ideas and generate surprising results from our partnerships.
Cockatoo Island Master Plan
The 2023 Draft Cockatoo Island / Wareamah Master Plan presents a new vision for island reactivation and transformation, to become the vibrant and connected heart of Western Sydney Harbour. It offers a sympathetic spatial response to the island’s layered history, with new and expanded visitor experiences, adaptive reuse and staged transformation over time.
Central Station Master Plan
This state significant project re-designs Sydney’s Central Station Precinct for the first time in over 100 years. Our public domain design seeks to connect the city through a network of new public spaces that link Surry Hills to Chippendale and allow the CBD to expand south to Redfern. We proposed a system of high performing green infrastructure to be seamlessly integrated with the grey infrastructure of the development.
The strategy develops the over station development ‘deck’ into a high performing piece of green infrastructure, providing the conditions for extensive urban canopy, connected soil networks and generous planted areas for cool green cover and increased biodiversity. Developing this extensive green infrastructure proposal above Sydney’s largest rail interchange will bring social, economic and environmental benefits both to the precinct, and the wider city.
Catalytic public projects with a strong social and environmental agenda
Design. Document. Deliver
Both large and small public spaces can deliver rich experiences and meaningful outcomes. Our built work showcases the potential to spark connections between people and the often invisible or forgotten natural systems that surround them.
Long Reef Surf Club
The Long Reef Surf Club upgrade balances the needs of the 750-member community club within a sensitive coastal dune ecosystem. We designed an innovative sequence of public courtyards that embrace the flux of the natural systems. We welcomed the windblown sand, designing furniture as sculptural scaffolds for emergent sand dunes.
Diverse planting covers rooftops and hugs walls to merge the built forms with the dune-scape. Our design demonstrates a new form of public beach infrastructure, one that welcomes the flow of people, birds, plants, water, wind and sand, celebrating the sublime flux of the coastal environment.
Winner of the 2023 AILA NSW Award of Excellence and 2023 National Landscape Architecture Award for Small Projects
Shale Hills Parklands
The Western Sydney Parklands Trust wanted a new park to engage the West Hoxton community. We undertook a master plan of Shale Hills, building a new logic for activation based on the unique infrastructure of farm dams and key lines. Managing access to ‘blue spaces’ in a dry landscape became the underlying spatial rationale across this large scale design.
The first part of the master plan we delivered through to construction was the Shale Hills Dog Park. Instead of the usual low-key affair, the park has been described as an ‘iconic piece of landscape architecture’, a sculptural, land-formed interpretation of the distinctive Western Sydney landscape. We designed unique features and details to ensure the park attracted repeat visits and brought community (and their animals) together. Locals have embraced the park as a valued recreation resource that’s become part of their daily routine.
Winner of the 2020 AILA NSW Award of Excellence for Parks and Open Space 2020
Seven Ways Bondi
Seven Ways is one of the busiest intersections in Bondi – a nexus of apartments, small business, split lanes and tight parking. Despite its well-connected location, retail was failing, and pedestrians felt unsafe. The design challenge was to create a vibrant community park out of traffic-dominated fragments of public domain.
Our design for Seven Ways Bondi fuses coastal ecology and planting with a sculptural ribbon of wall. The design creates a unique place for people – rejuvenating local businesses and demonstrating the potential of landscape architecture to connect a community.
Winner of the 2023 AILA NSW Landscape Architecture Award for Civic Landscape Architecture
Sculptural approach to layered landscapes
Draw. Model. Reveal.
We use creative analysis, drawing, model making, photography and mapping to find a way into our projects, revealing previously hidden qualities and creating experiential design strategies. We seek subtle ways for people to engage with nature, including making legible the systems and elements that are often unseen.
Southern Parklands Framework
The Southern Parklands Framework offers a fresh lens through which to view the Western Sydney Parklands. We studied the patterns of farm dams, hard-baked clay and the rolling hills of the Cumberland Plain. We drew inspiration from the mega scale – the robust infrastructure of adjacent freeways and canals, the panoramic sky views across the future Western Sydney Aerotropolis to the Blue Mountains and the Sydney city skyline – as well as from the micro details of grasses, texture and light at different times of day.
Winner of the 2019 AILA NSW and National Awards of Excellence for Parks and Open Space
Powerhouse Ultimo Renewal
The public domain strategy connects Powerhouse Ultimo to its wider context through a deep understanding of the geology and hydrology of greater Sydney. Our landform-based approach gives the building a sense of being embedded in the natural systems of its place. People will move through and dwell in spaces that respond to the underlying landform and pathways of water, from sandstone ridge to tidal mudflats. Plants, sunlight, textures and colours will remind visitors of where they are, grounded in Gadigal Country.
Winner of the 2023 National Design Competition
Powerful ideas through design research and academic partnerships
Explore. Articulate. Inspire.
We believe in the impact of a bold idea, clearly expressed and evocatively drawn. Our academic appointments, research and competition work keeps us primed for new thinking and inspiration. We frequently teach UTS design studios to share our knowledge and learn through the power of design thinking alongside our academic colleagues and students.
Diepsloot Environmental Masterplan
Between 2009 and 2011 Mark Tyrrell worked in the township of Diepsloot in Johannesburg, South Africa. Diepsloot is home to over 160,000 people, over half of whom live in informal arrangements without access to essential infrastructure. Mark became involved with the project through an international “think and do” tank that came out of the United Nations Millennium Development taskforce on improving the lives of slum dwellers. His team initially focused on improving quality of health through upgrading of the physical environment. Over three years, they grappled with the massive scale of the physical problems along with negotiating a path through power, politics and the violent realities of urban development in South Africa.
Winner of the 2009 AILA National Award for Unbuilt Landscape Architecture
Parramatta Ideas on Edge International Design Competition
Mark Tyrrell collaborated with Daniel Griffin to create a first prize winning entry to the 2011 international design competition Ideas on Edge Parramatta. The concept focuses upon blurring the boundaries between the local culture of Parramatta and its local ecosystem, finding moments of architectural drama at their junction. The scheme recognizes that the site is located at a brackish point of the river where the fresh water from the inland meets the salt water from the coast. It is a place where fish species mingle, salt and freshwater plant species are found and hundreds of birds are attracted to the mix.
Equal winner of the International Design Competition Ideas On Edge Parramatta 2011
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