New plaza view (60 and 25-storey towers by PTW Architects, 35-storey by Collins and Turner). Image Courtesy of PTW Architects
Peddle Thorp and Walker Architects (PTW), in association with Collins and Turner and McGregor Coxall, has revealed their winning proposal in the competition to transform Parramatta’s former Cumberland Newspaper site. Selected by an independent design jury, the mixed-use scheme features three towers, each incorporating residential, commercial, retail and public spaces. The towers line the south and western edges of a new urban plaza, which opens up to a public reserve on the banks of the Parramatta River.
Exterior Rendered View. Image Courtesy of Preliminary Research Office
Preliminary Research Office has revealed their entry to a competition to design the new civic center for the city of Ryde, Australia. The project uses a series of boxes at different scales to inform the organization of both the building and the public spaces. Following a competition of 175 entries from 49 countries, the project did not make the shortlist. However, its approach addresses the fundamental needs of a civic center to be dynamic, flexible and human-scale.
CHROFI and McGregor Coxall have designed Acadia Remembrance Sanctuary as a “bushland cemetery for a secular society.” The architects are proposing a burial ground located in the idyllic setting of a conservation woodland area on the outskirts of Sydney. The project calls for natural graves without headstones, instead opting for GPS technology to find the resting sites of loved ones. The tactic shifts the emphasis of cemeteries from the manicured appearances of individual plots and headstones to the retention and protection of the bush ecology. The proposed cemetery is situated on 10.1 hectares (25 acres) of parkland with a 400 square meter (4,500 square foot) building located at its center.