Infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic
On the edge of Port Phillip Bay, a reimagined pier has been recognized not merely for what it built, but for what it held together. The St Kilda pier's $53 million redesign claimed Victoria's highest architecture honor by doing something quietly radical: making space for penguins, fishers, tourists, and locals all at once, without diminishing any of them. In a city that is slowly learning to value listening over loudness, the award reads less like a verdict and more like a collective exhale of recognition.
- A working waterfront had to serve tourists, locals, fishers, ferry operators, marina users, and a colony of penguins simultaneously — a collision of needs that could easily have ended in compromise for all.
- The $53 million redesign resisted the temptation to privilege any single constituency, instead engineering a rare civic balance that the architecture profession had been watching closely since the project's national Urban Design award in March.
- Judges singled out the pier as proof that infrastructure need not be merely functional — that complexity, handled with care, can become playful and deeply social.
- Victoria's broader awards night revealed a profession turning away from demolition and spectacle, toward renovation, restraint, and designs that make room for the people and creatures already present.
- The triple win — Victorian architecture medal, Dimity Reed Melbourne prize, and Joseph Reed urban design award — confirmed what the city had already quietly decided: this pier belongs to everyone.
On Friday night, the St Kilda pier claimed Victoria's top architecture prize — not as a surprise, but as confirmation. The $53 million waterfront redesign, a collaboration between Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, Site Office Landscape Architecture, and AW Maritime, took home the Victorian architecture medal alongside the Dimity Reed Melbourne prize and the Joseph Reed award for urban design, adding to national accolades already collected in March.
What distinguished the project was not its budget or its engineering, but its ambition to serve almost everyone at once. Tourists arrived for the penguins. Locals wanted somewhere to walk. Fishers needed water access. Ferry operators and marina users had their own requirements. The penguins, for their part, simply wanted to be left alone. The judges praised the project for holding all of these demands in balance, writing that it demonstrated "how complex infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic."
Jury chair Simon Knott observed that the year's standout projects shared a common quality — they exceeded their original briefs, creating places people genuinely wanted to inhabit rather than merely use. The Sunbury community arts precinct exemplified this spirit: a site that began as a lunatic asylum in 1879 and passed through several institutional identities before being transformed by Architecture Associates and Openwork into a cultural hub. The judges noted the delicacy required when a building designed to exclude becomes one designed to gather.
In the residential categories, a clear preference emerged for renovation over demolition. Robert Simeoni Architects' restrained reimagining of a former 1870s Carlton hotel won two awards, with judges admiring how the practice worked "directly, honestly and poetically" within the constraints of rising costs and material shortages. A new timber house nested into the Birrarung flood plain canopy won the new residential prize for its choreographed immersion in landscape.
Taken together, the awards sketched a portrait of an architecture culture increasingly drawn to listening — to constraints, to communities, to the creatures already occupying a place. The St Kilda pier, with its improbable coalition of users, had become the clearest symbol of that shift.
On Friday night, the St Kilda pier—a $53 million reimagining of a working waterfront—claimed the top prize at Victoria's architecture awards, the kind of recognition that arrives not as a surprise but as confirmation of something the city already knew. The project, a collaboration between Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, Site Office Landscape Architecture, and AW Maritime, took home the Victorian architecture medal, the award reserved for the year's most outstanding work. It also collected the Dimity Reed Melbourne prize and the Joseph Reed award for urban design, adding to accolades it had already gathered at the national Urban Design awards in March.
What made this particular pier worth such attention was not the money spent or the engineering involved, but the fact that it had to work for almost everyone at once. Tourists came to see the penguins. Locals wanted a place to walk. Fishers needed access to the water. Ferry operators required their routes. Marina users expected their berths. The penguins, naturally, expected to be left alone. The judges noted that the project succeeded in holding all these demands in balance, and in doing so, it demonstrated something architects are increasingly being asked to prove: that infrastructure can be more than functional. "The project demonstrates how complex infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic," they wrote.
This year's awards reflected a broader shift in how Victoria's architecture community thinks about public space. Simon Knott, the jury chair and an architect-academic, observed that the standout projects shared a common trait—they transcended their original briefs. They were not content to simply solve a problem. Instead, they created places where people wanted to be. "We saw multiple community projects that are delightful sites of human congregation where community-centric design has been at the forefront, taking prosaic pieces of existing architecture and making them a place of recreation," Knott said. Even buildings with difficult histories had been "utterly transformed with deft hands."
The Sunbury community arts and cultural precinct was one such transformation. The site had begun as the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum in 1879, been renamed the Sunbury Hospital for the Insane in 1905, and renamed again as the Caloola Training Centre in 1985. After nearly two decades as part of the Victoria University campus, it had been converted into a cultural hub by Architecture Associates and Openwork. The judges recognized the delicate work required: "A fine balance is required when a building designed to restrict and remove persons from society becomes one that celebrates community coming together." The project won the John George Knight award for heritage and the award for interior architecture.
In the commercial realm, Fieldwork's design of 65 Dover Street in Cremorne claimed the Sir Osborn McCutcheon award. The building included a rooftop recreation space with a half-size basketball court—a small gesture toward making work life less purely extractive. The judges called it "integrous, gracious and refined," setting a new benchmark for commercial architecture at that scale.
The residential categories revealed a pronounced preference for thoughtful renovation over demolition. Robert Simeoni Architects' Palmerston Street house in Carlton, a restrained reimagining of a former 1870s hotel, won both the heritage award and the John and Phyllis Murphy award for alterations and additions. The architects had worked within tight constraints—rising construction costs, material shortages—and the judges admired how they "work directly, honestly and poetically within these limitations to find a spatial and material language that delights in its own economy." For new builds, Edition Offices' "House in a Garden" took the Harold Desbrowe Annear award, an elevated timber structure nested into the canopy of the Birrarung flood plain that created what the judges described as "a cinematic sense of immersion within a highly choreographed landscape."
The awards suggested something worth noting: the architecture that Victoria's profession now celebrates is not the kind that announces itself loudly or tears down what came before. It is the kind that listens, that works within constraints, that makes room for the people and creatures already there. The St Kilda pier, with its penguins and fishers and tourists and locals, had become a symbol of that approach—and the city had noticed.
Citações Notáveis
The project demonstrates how complex infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic— Victorian architecture awards jury
A fine balance is required when a building designed to restrict and remove persons from society becomes one that celebrates community coming together— Judges on the Sunbury community arts precinct conversion
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
What made the St Kilda pier different from other waterfront projects?
It had to serve too many masters at once—tourists, locals, fishers, ferry operators, marina users, and the penguins themselves. Most projects optimize for one or two of those. This one found a way to hold them all.
The judges used the word "playful" to describe infrastructure. That's an unusual choice.
It is. Infrastructure is usually supposed to be invisible—you use it without thinking about it. But the pier became a place people wanted to be, not just a place they had to pass through. That's the difference between something functional and something beloved.
The Sunbury asylum conversion seems like it required a different kind of skill.
Yes. You're not just adapting a building; you're rewriting its meaning. A place designed to confine people became a place for gathering. The architects had to honor the building's history without being trapped by it.
Why are heritage renovations winning over new builds in the residential category?
Partly it's practical—material costs are high, land is scarce. But it's also philosophical. There's a recognition that what already exists often has value we've overlooked. Making something old work better is harder than starting fresh, and the profession is rewarding that difficulty.
Is this a trend or a moment?
It feels like a trend. The jury chair specifically noted that projects transcending their utilitarian briefs were the standouts. That's not a one-year thing. That's a direction.