The Public Architecture within a Dramatic and Ancient Landscape

Metro North-West

Architect: Hassell with Turpin Crawford Studio and McGregor Westlake Architecture 

Photography by Mark Syke

The Metro North-West includes eight new stations, five furbished stations and the associated precincts, carparks and service buildings. A pattern book of structures and materials unites the series of stations that each adjust to suit the local conditions along a 31km corridor in Sydney’s northwest.

The stations and complementary plazas and gardens of Metro North-West offer an elegant, yet robust architecture that both expresses an engineering logic and frames considered, artful spaces.

Warrumbungle National Park Visitor Centre

Architect: TKD Architects

Photography by Brett Boardman

The challenge of inserting a new built environment within a dramatic and ancient landscape is here realised with apparent ease and respect. Rather than compete with the spectacular silhouette of the Warrumbungle National Park escarpment, the solution for the new Visitor Centre – replacing the previous one destroyed by bushfire - has been centred on striking a strong horizontal roof line that contrasts with the undulating nature of the surrounding landscape.

In plan the new Visitor Centre engages positively with its immediate landscape through the use of curving, stone-clad walls that celebrate the iconic volcanic dykes and rock formations, while offering a strong sense of arrival that intuitively guides visitors to the heart of the centre.