Burwood Brickworks

The Burwood Brickworks retail centre designed by NH Architecture for Frasers Property achieves the distinction of being the world’s most sustainable shopping complex. A crucial adjunct to the centre is the urban plaza - an important new community space including generously proportioned areas for café seating, raised performance platforms, assertive shelter structures, extensive undulating lawns and a bespoke play sculpture by artist Alexander Knox. Carefully arranged organic concrete seating walls contrast with rectangular structures inlaid with intricate timberwork that create herringbone shadows as a homage to the bricks once fabricated on the site. Rigorous attention to detail and carefully proportioned elements create balanced and compelling public spaces that are bordered by residential apartments, linking spaces, courtyard gardens and eventually a village green. A massive embankment wall to the southern edge of the site acts as a giant sculptural canvas, with seemingly random steel angles providing dramatic shadows by day or night reminiscent of brick patterning.

The Village Green is an expansive open space area with dramatic landform, multiple activity zones, and a custom play tower recalling the quarrying and brick manufacturing history of the site.

Awarded the 2022 UDIA Design Excellence Award and the 2022 UDIA Medium Density Development Award.