_openwork

This is breaking a road to make a park. . The City of Yarra has engaged us to prepare a concept design for Budd Street in Collingwood as part of its “roads to parks” program. The policy takes selected streets in urban areas and liberates them from cars by turning them into public pocket parks. . For Budd Street, we’re interested in how the park can conquer the road in a way that fits with the highly urban character of the street, its adjacent graffiti covered warehouses and weirdly huge electricity infrastructure. . In the place of an orthodox landscape architecture, the scheme settles on the uncanny - the familiar but out of place - as a way of banishing cars and inviting the body. Trees break through asphalt, planting is protected by a salvaged yellow tram prow, a light pole lies down in the street as a seat and a small forest gives its shade to brick and bluestone. . The City of Yarra is taking public feedback until the 13h April. Google “yoursayyarra” to … have your say. . . . #carfree #partsof #the @cityofyarra

This is great. The 2026 Australian Urban Design Awards has named Balam Balam Place as a winner in the 2026 Built Outcomes category. We are honoured with this acknowledgement and proud to be part of an extraordinary team - @kennedy_nolan @finding_infinity @siteworks_ @jordanrowe.info @timrobdondow and many more under the fearless sponsorship of @merri_bekcitycouncil and built by the incomperable @mccorkell_constructions and @westlandcommercial . Katheine Sundermann, chair of the stellar Steering Committee for the Australian Urban Design Awards said that “This year’s winners reflect a gentler approach to urban transformation: projects rooted in Indigenous and community leadership, ecological landscapes, and the creation of places for people to gather … These projects reinforce a simple idea: urban transformation works best when it involves diverse people, responds to the specifics of place, and improves places over time.” . Very pleased to be in the company of other Built Outcomes recipients @jcbarchitects #siteoffice and @hillthalisaup . Openwork Team: Blake Farmar-Bowers, Dylan Gilmore, Liz Herbert, Mark Jacques. . . . 📸: @peterbbennetts @balambalamplace #australianurbandesignawards

New project announcement: Our team’s proposal has been selected as the competition winning design for the new Coburg Library and Piazza project. A library is a place of invitation and acceptance. It offers comfort without commerce. It is aspirational without entry criteria. A library is a repository for memory and learning - alone and shared, quiet for solace and exuberant for connection. The proposed building is small in footprint, tall in stature. Its small footprint and siting guarantee solar access to the new piazza. Its height provides a beacon for the community, visible from afar as a memorable moment in the city. The Piazza will be the new civic heart of Coburg: a generous, sunlit space where flows of water and people converge. It will honour a long history of gathering, abundance, and exchange. A tree-ed colonnade, gentle topography and basalt surfaces create a landscape in and of place. It will sponsor cultural connection, ecological renewal, and a future precinct shaped by community. Competition overseen by @citylabau . Thank you to the competition jury: Government Architect for Victoria, Jill Garner; Director of Sibling Architecture, Qianyi Lim; Associate Professor of Architecture, Monash University, Maryam Gusheh; Director of Jones and Whitehead, and Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at RMIT University, Ron Jones; and Director Community at Merri-bek City Council, Eamonn Fennessy. We acknowledge our fellow competitors: Studio Bright, Oculus, Board Grove, Blaklash, Five Mile Radius and Barbara Flynn; FJC Studio, TCL and The Indigenuity Lab and Edition Office, Blaklash, Hassell, Finding Infinity and Kate Rhodes. Design Team @durbachblockjaggers @architectureassociates @openwork Client @merri_bekcitycouncil

This is the corner of Brunswick and Gertrude streets in Fitzroy. . The heavy shrubs that have forever held the street apart from the Atherton Gardens Estate have been removed and replaced by a new topography which spills out to meet the footpath. A series of spaces are carved out and embedded within this new and densely planted landform. A new ramp allows access to the top of the Gardens and an uninterrupted view across the estate’s parkland - a significant space for the Aboriginal community in Melbourne. . The new spaces host a diaspora of Victorian stone, cut and arranged to face significant places in the public and Aboriginal life of Fitzroy. . Openwork was commissions by the City of Yarra, were joined by Sarah Lynn Rees, Declan Fry and WSP and the project was delivered Evergreen Civil. . Photobomb by @rolandsnooks and @architect_brewkoch . There’s more on our website. . 📷: @peterbbennetts

This is the corner of Brunswick and Gertrude Streets in Fitzroy. . Basalt, sandstone and pink mudstone. With a nice photobomb from Peter Bennetts. . 📷: @peterbbennetts . . #kindness #peopleofgertrudestreet

This is the corner of Brunswick and Gertrude streets in Fitzroy. . The heavy shrubs that have forever held the street apart from the Atherton Gardens Estate have been removed and replaced by a new topography which spills out to meet the footpath. A series of spaces are carved out and embedded within this new and densely planted landform. A new ramp allows access to the top of the Gardens and an uninterrupted view across the estate’s parkland - a significant space for the Aboriginal community in Melbourne. The new spaces host a diaspora of Victorian stone, cut and arranged to face significant places in the public and Aboriginal life of Fitzroy. . Openwork was commissions by the City of Yarra, were joined by Sarah Lynn Rees, Declan Fry and WSP and the project was delivered Evergreen Civil. . There’s more on our website. . 📷: @peterbbennetts . . . #PublicLife #Fitzroy

This is new trees with old trees. And a building completing a courtyard. . This one was a joy. . 📷: @peterbbennetts . . . . @_openwork @architectureassociates @humecitycouncil @stokesrousseau #landscapearchitect #landscapearchitecture

A study model for Sunbury. . At a scale that makes trees look like pebbles. . Followed by Peter Bennetts' image of the real thing. . 📷1: @_openwork 📷2: @peterbbennetts . . . @_openwork @architectureassociates @humecitycouncil @stokesrousseau #scale #modelshoot

This is a new chapter in a difficult story. The Sunbury Community Arts and Cultural Precinct is located within the former Female Ward of the Sunbury Asylum on Jackson’s Hill. The brief called for the adaptive reuse of both the Refractory building which opened in 1879 and a more modest mid-century Worker’s Shed into venues that can host and support the arts, the community and cultural events. . Architecture Associates led the project and have delivered a beautiful new pavilion building, adapted the workshop building and transformed the interior of the heritage building to host galleries and spaces for making. . This landscape is delivered as four light-touch interventions: the redesign of the main building’s four courtyards as spaces that can host their adjacent cultural uses; the transformation of the workers shed into a workshop that is carefully connected to the main building; the thoughtful removal of material from the former heritage privy in a way that turns it into a landscape pavilion and a breach in the fence of the main lawn forming a new lookout over the three creeks that form the Sunbury plain. . More on our website. . 📷: @peterbbennetts . . . . @architectureassociates @_openwork @humecitycouncil @stokesrousseau

1/3 This is a building arranged around a garden. . Little Miller Street / Neighbourhood is a multiple residential project adjacent to Balfe Park in Brunswick. The brief called for a massing response on a square site that created its own internal amenity. . The scheme imagines medium density living as something wrapped around and connected to a central courtyard space suspended above a level of carparking below. This space functions as shared address to homes that front it on level 1 and that acts as a constantly changing visual amenity for the apartments above which look into it. . Openwork collaborated with Breathe Architecture on the residential building and with Kerstin Thompson Architects and Breathe Architecture on the master plan for the site. . There’s more on our website. . 📷: Peter Clarke . . . #landscape #architecture #landscapearchitecture #gardens #hortus

2/3 This is a building arranged around a garden. . Little Miller Street / Neighbourhood is a multiple residential project adjacent to Balfe Park in Brunswick. The brief called for a massing response on a square site that created its own internal amenity. . The scheme imagines medium density living as something wrapped around and connected to a central courtyard space suspended above a level of carparking below. This space functions as shared address to homes that front it on level 1 and that acts as a constantly changing visual amenity for the apartments above which look into it. . Openwork collaborated with Breathe Architecture on the residential building and with Kerstin Thompson Architects and Breathe Architecture on the master plan for the site. . There’s more on our website. . 📷: Peter Clarke . . . #landscape #architecture #landscapearchitecture #gardens #hortus

3/3 This is a building arranged around a garden. . Little Miller Street / Neighbourhood is a multiple residential project adjacent to Balfe Park in Brunswick. The brief called for a massing response on a square site that created its own internal amenity. The scheme imagines medium density living as something wrapped around and a connected to a central courtyard space suspended above a level of carparking below. This space functions as shared address to homes that front it on level 1 and that acts as a constantly changing visual amenity for the apartments above which look upon it. . Openwork collaborated with Breathe Architecture on the project. . There’s more on our website. . 📷: Peter Clarke . . . #landscape #architecture #landscapearchitecture #gardens #hortus