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We were very excited that Parramatta Aquatic Centre was awarded an Urban Design Award 2024 NSW AIA Architecture Awards!. A huge thank you to everyone involved at ABA, Grimshaw, and McGregor Coxall.

Jury Citation:

The Parramatta Aquatic Centre (PAC) transcends the typical, transforming itself into an oasis both within and outside the centre.

It fosters a sense of discovery where pool users and passersby can connect and interact. Criss-crossing public pathways through, above, and into the centre expand the facility’s purpose from its core function to make the building itself an expansive public space.

The key challenge - accommodating 15,000sqm within a public park - is resolved through a singular insight: burying the building beneath gardens that together form a perfect circle. This innovative design prioritises camouflaging the building's physical footprint, embedding connections between the building and parkland.

The PAC breaks away from the sterile steel boxes often associated with aquatic centres, drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape. Recycled construction waste form the retaining gabion walls, with concrete and native planting creating a sense of inevitability to the outcome. The park's flora is extended into the heart of the centre, reinforcing its connection to nature.

Adding another layer of significance, the PAC incorporates a tapestry of First Nations interpretive elements. This project is an exemplar for local governments seeking the greatest value for their projects, prioritising community, sustainability, and cultural connection.

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We were thrilled to win the Sulman Medal for the Parramatta Aquatic Centre on Friday night! A huge thank you to everyone involved at ABA, Grimshaw, and McGregor Coxall. At ABA, Chris Mullaney had a big hand in both our GPARC and PAC competitions. Eric Ye played a crucial role in exploring the circular design concept, continuing through the DA and documentation phases. Charles Choi and Lucas McMillan were key members on the competition. Eva Ponsati led the project at ABA through detailed design and documentation, with assistance on interiors from Cameron Deynzer.

Our collaboration with Grimshaw was seamless, on the back of 35 years of friendship and architectural conversations between Andrew and Andrew Cortese. Thank you to Andrew C for opening the Grimshaw Sydney office to our team, and for your feedback, advocacy and support. Thanks also to Michael Janeke and Mark Gilder, and to Amalia Mayor and Marlena Prost for helping frame the competition entry. A big thanks to Josh Henderson as the project lead at Grimshaw, Elena Lucio for being such a force in design development, documentation, and on site, and Kathryn Chang for her façade and interior documentation.

Working with McGregor Coxall was a pleasure from start to finish, collaborating with Phil Coxall, Xavi Font Sala, Matt Ritson, Kemi Amede, Alexandra Duff and Tangent Le to develop an Aquatic Centre that placed landscape as the focal point of the site strategy.

Thanks to Parramatta Council, including Sue Raven for her aquatic feedback, David Moutou and Ben Chaplin for client-side guidance, and Boz Lukin and David Hands for project delivery. Also to Warren Green for his input on the brief development as a consultant to Parramatta Council. A big thank you to Kim Crestani for her drive to make the project a success as part of the Design Excellence competition jury.

The team at Lipman, led by Darren Chignell, did a fantastic job on site, maintaining quality amid rain and post-COVID supply challenges.

Finally, a big thank you to Min Dark and the ABA team at Surry Hills for keeping the office running smoothly while I spent much time at Grimshaw and on-site.

Jury Citation:

The Parramatta Aquatic Centre, a collaboration between Parramatta City Council, McGregor Coxall Landscape Architects, Grimshaw and ABA, is an example of a different way of conceptualising aquatic centres.

The masterplan is clever in its simplicity. The siting of the pool responds to the park’s topography and context and is located to maximise retention of existing trees. The circular design is cut into the park, maximising public views in, out and over the facility. This makes the experience of visiting the pool more about the landscape experience than the built form, appropriate given the location within World Heritage Listed Parramatta Park. The facility is functional and rational in its internal planning, with materials chosen for strength and durability. Natural light filters through to the internal programmed spaces.

This project is an incredible addition to ‘Public Sydney’ and demonstrates the importance and value of strong urban design and landscape input to drive the best public outcomes.

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We have new email addresses! ABA have recently updated our email domain to ‘___@aba.sydney’, matching the domain of our new website launched late last year.

Any email to our old domain ‘___@aba-architects.com.au’ will be automatically forwarded to our new addresses.

Please update your address book if you have not already.

Over the weekend, Andrew presented and participated in a round-table discussion on the work of John Andrews. The event was associated with the exhibition 'John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense' at the Tin Sheds Gallery (University of Sydney). The discussion involved former members of the John Andrews International Office and was moderated by co-curators Paul Walker and Kevin Liu.

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Andrew presents at the AustraliaNow talks - a joint presentation organised by Brickworks, AIANY and CultureNOW. It is a great opportunity to see a cross section of Australian Architecture as part of the celebration of the Opera House’s 50th birthday.

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As we move beyond Covid there is a pressing task of re-establishing relationships across practice, making the profession tangible. This series of talks will focus on affiliations. Each event will be hosted at a large practice, generously inviting the profession in. A pair of talks will be presented; the large practice and an invited small / medium practice. Through this multiplicity of voices the talk series will explore issues critical to our discipline, identifying affiliations across scales and modes of practice.

We are thrilled to have received the City of Sydney Lord Mayor’s Prize and a Public Architecture Award at the NSW AIA Awards last Friday for our Gunyama Park Aquatic Recreation Centre (GPARC) 🎉🎉.

From the outset, we wanted to make a project that really expanded the recreational opportunities for the local community – not just a place for people to train and keep fit but a place where everybody could enjoy the pleasures of swimming – a generous and inclusive recreational heart for this emerging high-density neighbour-hood. Achieving this vision has been a collective effort. We would like to thank Clover Moore and City of Sydney
for their leadership in connecting high quality sustainable design with community needs.

We are thrilled to have received the Best Kitchen Award on Dwell Award 2020.

The project has been a beautiful collaboration with our clients Will & Julia Dangar, Interior design consultants Karen McCartney & David Harrison, and with Robert Plumb Build.

Photography by Prue Ruscoe.

ABA’s Bismarck House is featured in the Australian Financial Review, edited by Stephen Todd.

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We were very excited to win 2020 House Interior of the Year at the recent Dezeen Awards. A big thank you to our collaborators on the interior, David Harrison and Karen McCartney and builder Bill Clifton from Robert Plumb Build and clients Will and Julia Dangar. Photography by Peter Bennetts.

Andrew presenting selected projects from past works, and projects currently in process at Cosentino City Centre Sydney.
Curated by David McCrae of mm+j architects

Recent photography of Gunyama Park Aquatic Recreation Centre captured by Brett Boardman.

Construction is complete and the facility will open in February 2021.

Construction continues on our Gunyama Park Aquatic Recreation Centre. In a recent drone photography by Brett Boardman. The centre is due for completion in 2020.


We are thrilled to receive the Hugh and Eva Buhrich Award for Residential Architecture (Alterations and Additions) for our Bismarck House! The project has been a beautiful collaboration with our clients Will & Julia Dangar, Interior design consultants Karen McCartney & David Harrison, and with Robert Plumb Build. The Bismarck House also won a Commendation for Interior Architecture. Congratulations to all the award winners and shortlisted projects.

ABA’s Bismarck House is on Better Homes and Garden at 7+ channel.

Link to the video can be found here


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After three months working remotely, ABA returned to the Surry hills office this week. To give us a reason to come back, and to give the spirit of the architects bookshop a new home, Andrew took the chance to repurpose the bookshelf here, just around the corner in Marlborough Street.


A rare project collaboration initiated by Will Dangar (Dangar Barin Smith Landscape) and Bill Clifton (Robert Plumb Build), saw a pair of semi-detached houses reinvented as a playful, cohesive pair. ABA was engaged to design the northern laneway lot for Will Dangar, while Potter Wilson Architects had already completed the design for Bill Clifton’s semi to the south. To celebrate the completion of both projects, a double house open night was coordinated by Karen McCartney and David Harrison, who acted as interior design consultants for Will Dangar’s project. It was a beautiful night shared with colleagues in construction, architecture, and design.

Having won the 2017 WAF Best Completed Education Project, (for the East Sydney Learning Centre) Andrew was invited to judge this year’s Education category at the 2018 WAF in Amsterdam. As well as judging at the festival, Andrew took the opportunity to revisit many OMA projects in the Netherlands he first visited in the mid 1990’s, as well as seminal housing projects including Borneo Sporenburg by West 8 and Hans Kollhoff’s 1994 Piraeus Housing Block.

Construction is now underway for Gunyama Park Aquatic and Recreation Centre (GPARC). The ABA, Grimshaw and TCL team were joined by Lord Mayor Clover Moore and CPB Contractors to officially break ground at the site. A traditional Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony marked the start of the main works. The centre is due for completion in 2020.

The East Sydney Early Learning Centre was shortlisted to present at the World Architecture Festival from 15-17th November 2017 in Berlin. Andrew presented the project on Day One of the festival and we are very excited to announce that the ESELC took out the category award for School – Completed Buildings. Congratulations to all entries and thank you to the City of Sydney for supporting such an ambitious project! A full list of award winners can be found here.

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Andrew attended the National AIA Awards in Canberra and ABA’s East Sydney Early Learning Centre was awarded the Daryl Jackson Award for Educational Architecture! It was a joy to work on a project where the ‘delight of the child’ was at the forefront. Thank you to the City of Sydney and all that contributed to the project. Thank you also to the AIA, it is a thrill to be recognised amongst such an esteemed list of entries. Congrats to all! A full list of award winners can be found here.

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Andrew was invited to judge this year’s Tapestry Design Prize for Architects, an international tapestry competition for architects. This year’s brief was centred around Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton and hypothetically sited in the Pharoah Wing of MONA, in Tasmania. Read more about the competition here

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Andrew Burges will be talking on formative years in his architectural education, reflecting on the influence of the teaching of Swetik Korzeniewski as part of the Antecedence Series at the Institute of Architects on 10.11 in Sydney and the 17.11 in Melbourne. See the link for the talk here


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Andrew is in Europe on an architectural study trip, visiting and learning from inventive timber buildings and structures. The trip forms part of the Intergrain Timber Vision Travel Bursary Award, which ABA won last year for our East Sydney Early Learning Centre project.


ABA’s Brick House has been shortlisted for the 2017 IDEA Awards in the Residential Single category. Winners will be announced at the annual IDEA Gala Party in November this year. A full list of shortlisted entries can be found here.


ABA’s Brick House has received a commendation in the popular ‘New House over 200sq.m category’ at the 2017 Houses awards at the National Gallery of Victoria on Friday night. A link to the commended projects can be found here. A link to the winning projects can be found here


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Andrew presented alongside other esteemed architects at the AIA Tuesdays at Tusculum Talk, Designing where we work, love and play. The talk invited select award winners from the NSW Chapter Awards to present their projects through the lens of work, love and play.

We were very happy to receive an AIA award for Educational Architecture, and a commendation for Interior Architecture, for our East Sydney Early Learning Centre. Thanks to City of Sydney for their leadership in engaging us to provide a best practice childcare design, and congratulations to the contractor Belmadar for their efforts on such a challenging site. A list of awarded projects can be found here.


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We were thrilled to receive a residential architecture award for our Brick House at the Australian Institute of Architecture Awards on July 1st. Thanks to our client and builder Shane Green Building for their collaboration on the project. Congratulations to all the award winners. A list of awarded projects can be found here.


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ABA’s East Sydney Early Learning Centre was awarded this year’s Travel Bursary Award in the Intergrain Timber Vision Awards. The project also received a commendation in the Commercial Exterior Award category. A full list of award winners can be found here. The jury’s citation can also be read here.

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Australasian Leisure news reviews the ambitious sustainability targets of ABA and Grimshaw’s GPARC Aquatic Centre. Targeted as the first Aquatic Centre to achieve a 5 star as Built Green Star rating, an outline of the project and its sustainability principles can be viewed here

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Andrew Burges joined with Will Fung from CO-AP in Hobart to talk on recent work as part of the Brickworks ‘Double Talk’ Series. Andrew focussed on the recently completed Brick House and East Sydney Early Learning Centre, and the upcoming GPARC Park and Aquatic centre.
A link to the talk can be found here.

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Andrew Burges spoke as part of the Surry Hills ‘About the House’ series curated by Ian Moore. A series typically dedicated to inner city housing solutions, Andrew’s talk instead focused on the social, community and recreational infrastructure required in support of high density housing, illustrated through ABA’s recently completed East Sydney Early Learning Centre and the upcoming GPARC Aquatic and Recreation Centre, which will form the recreational heart for the Green Square Town Centre.

Andrew Burges will be reflecting on his consultation with the City of Sydney Inclusions (Disability) Panel through the design of the GPARC Aquatic Centre as part of a Preconference Workshop for the 2016 Universal Design Conference. The workshop, entitled ‘Best Practice in Public Facility Design’, will review the success of the COS Inclusions Panel in developing a more human centred approach to Universal Design. See the conference link to the workshop here


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Andrew’s review of the stunning 1972 Gissing House by Harry Seidler is published in Houses Magazine 91. The link to the article can be found here. (Photo Credit - Chris Colls)


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Andrew kicked off the University of Queensland Architecture lecture series with a talk on ‘Geography Making’ featuring recent public, competition and residential projects at the . Andrew’s interview with the State Library prior to the lecture is in the link here

A video link of the lecture can be found here https://vimeo.com/121851732

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Our family and childcare centre at 277 Bourke St Darlinghurst for the City of Sydney is progressing on site. Due for completion during 2016, the works are being undertaken by Belmadar Constructions.

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ABA’s Skylight House has been selected as a finalist for the Think Brick Horbury Hunt award, celebrating innovation and craftsmanship in the use of brickwork. View the Skylight House and other selected entries here


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ABA’s Skylight House wins the best alterations and additions over 200 sq.m award at the 2014 Houses awards. See the jury’s comments here


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ABA's Pittwater House has been shortlisted in the World Architecture Festival's residential architecture awards for the best new houses globally in 2014. See the link to the 10 shortlisted houses here

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ABA have been selected from 144 local and international entrants as finalists for Stage 2 of the Gunyama Park and Green Square Aquatic Centre Competition. The concept for the project focused on expanding the community appeal of the Aquatic centre by grafting the hedonistic qualities of Sydney’s beach pools into a new urban leisure and wetland landscape. View more of the ABA Gunyama Park entry here.

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ABA, in association with Grimshaw Architects and Taylor Cullity Lethlean Landscape Architects, has been selected as the winner of the Gunyama Park Aquatic and recreation Centre. See the Sydney Morning Herald's article on the competition announcement here and Channel 9's coverage here

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ABA has won an excellence in timber award at the 2013 Australian Timber Design Awards for its custom cladding design for the Pittwater House. Congratulations to all the design winners, who can be seen here


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ABA won the 2012 Heritage award for its renovation and rooftop pavilion addition to a 1930’s modernist dwelling in Darling Point. A link to all the 2012 winners can be found here

The project can also be found in Issue 87 of Houses Magazine.


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A detailed practice profile of ABA has been featured in Houses magazine 86. The article by Natalie Ward explores early influences and the evolution of the design approach of the practice. A link to the article can be found here.


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ABA has been shortlisted for its Australia House competition entry. The competition, for a new artist in residence studio in the rural Japanese Niigata Prefecture as part of Echigo – Tsumari Art Triennale, had 154 entries from around the world. The jury of Tadao Ando, Tom Henigan and Fram Kitagawa awarded first prize to Andrew Burns Architects. See the press release here.


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ABA’s Harbourside Villas and boathouse are featured in this month’s addition of Houses Magazine.


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ABA has won the 2011 Woollahra Council Heritage Award for our renovation of an interwar functionalist residence at Darling Point. The renovation of the two storey existing building, including a new third level rooftop ‘pavilion’, worked closely with the original intent of the original Nesbitt design while creating an contemporary adaption of the projects guiding modernist principles.


ABA’s Stone House in Bondi has been featured in Kitchens + Bathrooms


ABA’s alterations and additions to a weekender at Palm Beach has been published in Houses Issue 60.

Andrew Burges Architects

32/61 Marlborough St
Surry Hills NSW 2010

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