Designed by Woods Bagot with landscape architecture by REALMstudios, the completed campus is an inner-city hub for learning, research, collaboration and community, with contemporary and accessible facilities for the University of Tasmania’s students and staff. 

The original Melville Street site was home to heritage-listed brick warehouses dating back to 1922, when the site was used as a dry timber store and sawmill outlet. The project objectives were to revitalise, adapt and activate the site though a highly connected, masterplan that honours heritage, celebrates natural landscape, and accommodates the diverse teaching needs of the university. 

Woods Bagot Director and Global Education Sector Leader Sarah Ball says the Forestry campus responds to contemporary ways of learning, with highly attuned and flexible infrastructure to support the university’s future evolution. 

“Our design supports the university’s academic ethos by creating flexible pedagogical environments that support collaboration and quiet focus respectively, alongside vibrant civic spaces underscored by a connection to place,” says Ball. “Diversity, biophilia, visual interest, and spatial quality are engineered to support learning outcomes and user wellbeing, creating a hub for learning, research and collaboration for student, staff and community.”  

The result is a highly connected campus that unifies the disparate built elements onsite with integrated landscape, through-block connections and publicly accessible thoroughfares. The design team strived to create a campus – not a building – through a masterplan that features a collection of diverse and rich interstitial spaces to meet the requirements of the university.

Woods Bagot is the architectural partner in Multiplex’s core consultant team to design and construct the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport terminal. Building on the competition and reference design by Zaha Hadid Architects and Cox Architecture, the final design encapsulates the sense of place and qualities of the Western Sydney region for a compelling journey experience through the landside, terminal and airside transitions. 

Woods Bagot Project Lead Neil Hill says, Hill says, “Inspired by country, our focus for the design encapsulates the true of essence of Western Sydney as a profoundly beautiful and timeless place. Western Sydney is distinct from anywhere else in the world, and we’ve worked hard to capture the forms, textures and colours of the landscape – from the Cumberland Plains to the Blue Mountains, and down to the granular detail of local materials – through powerful, horizontal layers throughout the design.”

“Each sandstone block in the building was individually selected for its placement. It’s a very different type of sandstone than you would see in the eastern CBD, in the banks and the museums, in corporate lobbies,” says Hill.

“We deliberately went for a very textured, rich series of panels… then what we did is we ran these horizontal datums around the whole terminal to give you that sedimentary feel. By bringing in that void and skylight and natural light, we deliberately set it up so it washes the whole sandstone wall, and it becomes the draw card after a long flight, picking your bag up in the reclaim hall.” 

As the first major airport built in Australia in over 50 years, WSI signals a generational shift that will transform Western Sydney. Located in Badgerys Creek, the terminal is a catalyst for long-term economic, social and cultural opportunity.  Inspired by the vast horizons of the Cumberland Plain, the terminal’s architecture reflects the natural beauty of the region. Its horizontal form and soft edges mirror the surrounding landscape, while its sculptural ceiling—one of the building’s defining features—filters light to echo the way sunlight moves through eucalyptus bark.  

Woods Bagot has completed the interior design for an innovative 850sqm show suite on Level 8 of Westralia Square 2, Western Australia’s first commercial timber hybrid tower. The project establishes new benchmarks for sustainable workplace design through its groundbreaking use of a fully demountable building system engineered from precision-milled plywood. All the walls are designed to be disassembled, replanned, re-used and reinstalled; providing the ultimate flexibility for the client.  

“This project allowed us to completely reimagine how we approach commercial interiors,” says Ethan Trang, Interior Design Leader at Woods Bagot. “We were guided by our innovative clients to craft a future forward workplace that was sustainable, flexible and premium.”  

The design narrative celebrates craftsmanship, the building’s architectural heritage and sense of place. Every element required a ‘maker’s touch,’ from the custom, locally made reception desk by renown WA furniture maker Nathan Day to hand crafted, mid-century Italian furniture pieces to bring international flair. The colour palette was inspired by the panoramic views of the Swan River and Kings Park.  

“The building being timber was very interesting, but it also inspired our approach,” explains Trang. “There were a lot of nuances and peculiarities with a timber hybrid building, and we did push the modular wall system to its limit. However, constraint became our greatest opportunity, and we’ve created something so sophisticated and bespoke that it is hard to imagine all the walls were not constructed from metal frame and plasterboard.”  

The awards and commendations will be announced at the gala presentation on Friday 12 June 2026 in Sydney. The evening will also reveal the top honour, the Premier Award for Australian Interior Design.

View the full shortlist here.

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Adrien Moffatt
Content and Communications Manager (Australia)