The American Architecture Prize honours designs in the disciplines of architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture with the goal of advancing the appreciation of architecture worldwide.
Barangaroo Reserve was selected as the 2017 Winner in the landscape architecture category, from a field of more than a thousand entries from 68 countries across the three disciplines.
Jury Citation:
Named for an influential Aboriginal woman of colonial Sydney, Barangaroo is a globally-significant, 22-hectare waterfront renewal project that redefines Sydney Harbour and its Central Business District.
Barangaroo Reserve was the first phase in the 3-district precinct to open. The project re-creates “Millers Point” headland in its original location by transforming a concrete container port into a naturalistic park with over 75,000 plantings native to the Sydney region.
Guided by historical maps and paintings, the design of the headland includes a foreshore of 10,000 sandstone blocks excavated directly from the site. Walking and bicycle pathways separated by the “1836 Wall” symbolically mark the original precolonial shoreline.
Barangaroo Reserve is carbon-neutral, water-positive, and committed to creating zero waste. Selected as a Clinton Global Initiative, One Planet Living, and C40 Climate Positive development, the project recycled all existing materials onsite to form the headland. Hidden beneath the artificial headland, the “Cutaway” is a massive void formed through the sandstone excavation operations to host art exhibits, performances, and a future Aboriginal Cultural Center.
Barangaroo Reserve transforms a huge expanse of empty concrete into humane, usable space, marking the transformation of an industrialized site into a modern reinvention of its more sustainable past.
