small and large scale elements retain character This project envisaged a new life for the redundant dockyards at the western edge of the Sydney CBD, now known as Barangaroo. It proposed major and small-scale elements without erasing the character of the area. Large-scale elements such as the wharves and the Argyle Cut contrast small scale finely textured terrace housing of the 19th century in the adjacent Rocks precinct. The scheme continues this contrast with a dramatic large scale urban park rising up to the level of the adjacent terrace houses. A canal-side housing precinct, a housing laboratory, is designed by different architects with the latest innovations in environmentally friendly row housing. Nearby is a zone of commercial office buildings with a fully accessible and a public green roof-scape. A large park rises from sea level with an urban beach and pool. Small visually connected spaces create intimate spaces for different user groups. A necklace of piazzette link these to pedestrian laneways, canals and streets.

Location: Sydney Partners: Terragram and Monckton Fyfe Status: International Design Competition, 2005

light refracts, reflects and penetrates architectural space CEA was one of five finalists in this international competition for a major urban public space celebrating Australia’s centenary of Federation. The space holds cultural facilities, restaurants, cafés and a public open space. The CEA concept was a ‘crystalline metaphor’, based on the reflection and refraction of light through transparent or translucent surfaces - crystals, ice cubes, broken glass. The gently sloping site includes a bluestone plinth crossed at the base by two long buildings, beams that transect the site. One is an exhibition gallery of sandstone, the other a multi-media discovery gallery of bright red enamelled steel. Glass prisms pierce these beams forming the wintergarden roof and creating shards of light to form negative or inverse space, voids that echo the space above and the sky itself. It affords protection from cold southerly winds and creates a large sun-trap. The central concern is the exploration of light as it refracts, reflects and penetrates into architectural space.

Client: Victorian Government Location: Melbourne, Australia Status: International Design Competition, Finalist, 1997

A hyper-dense concept for a twenty first century town centre incorporates green walls and roofs, waterways and connections at multiple levels.

Client: Sydney City council Status: Design competition 2001

marks on a redundant quarry  An international competition was held to explore ideas for the Brickpit, adjacent to Sydney’s Olympics site. 'The Indigenous moves through the land, dwells and records with little modification. The coloniser tames the landscape, imposing pattern.' Can these be reconciled? The CEA concept places a ring of casurina trees at the site edge to make the Olympics development invisible. A major ramp leads down to the brickpit and rises again into the Bi-Centennial mangrove swamps. A bridge leads across the wetlands to a square platform of grass. Further wanderings lead to a grassy mound, to industrial ruins, a lake. Wetlands are extended, and a forest of native species expands. Three main constructed elements - ramp, timber platforms and lookouts and mound - are connected by paths of pit materials - white line (from white shale), black line (black shale), brick line, stepping stones. They intersect and blend into rubble-paved areas, blurring the lines between the constructed and the extant. The former industrial sheds are retained as shelter and slowly allowed to decay.

Client: Undisclosed Location: Homebush Bay Brickpit, Sydney, Australia Status: International Ideas Competition, 3rd Prize, 1998

an ecological satellite An international urban design competition called for the re-vitalisation of a derelict railway yard in the northern part of Osaka. An opportunity to develop a visionary model for the twenty-first century city, CEA's concept saw buildings treated as living surfaces, draped as a terrain across the various building masses and programmatic elements. A second skin, an artificial topography, was created with the various layers of the building volumes treated as the contours of an imaginary landscape. The entire surface is covered in greenery, a verdant tapestry of vegetation and aquaculture - parks, gardens, agriculture and secondary food producing facades. Growing plants on vertical surfaces creates a harvestable facade and a secondary skin. The various land-use functions overlap and encase one another. For example, buildings that require large floor plates, such as shopping arcades, department stores and parking, occupy 'squat' buildings while those that require light, views and air, such as offices and apartments, occupy the higher and more slender buildings.

Client: Undisclosed Location: Osaka, Japan Partners: Terragram Pty Ltd Images: CEA Status: International Urban Design Competition, 2003

past legacy, future needs How to reconcile the legacy of the past with the needs of the future? A beautiful island in Sydney harbour - should we touch it? The beauty conceals a fascinating past. Of convict prisoners, of ship builders. And if we do retain its man-made intrusions, at what historical moment should an historic site be frozen? The shortlisted proposal incorporated both park and museum as part of a comprehensive community with a mixture of uses. The project was based on the premise that we need to use urban space more intensively and inventively if we are to address growing population and eliminate urban sprawl.

Location: Biloela [Cockatoo Island] Sydney, Australia Size: 45Ha Images: CEA Status: International Ideas Competition, Shortlisted, 1996

a water-filled future CEA won the first national ideas competition for re-developing the 240 ha site in south Sydney with a scheme that extended the Alexandra Canal into a large water basin. A network of canals lined with four to ten storey apartment buildings terminates with a water basin surrounded by an entertainment complex, retail centre and transport interchange. A new valley connects this area to a major new area of habitation. Road bridges convey the traffic seven metres above the valley, with pedestrian and cycle ways passing below, providing safe places of work, travel and play. Excavated earth from the site creates an enormous embankment, a green buffer zone separating the new housing areas from the main arterial road. It features a vast amphitheatre for outdoor events and theatre. Clean fill generates a large ramped ziggurat providing spectacular views towards the city and Botany Bay. The jury described it as a "brave, imaginative and achievable future, an exciting and evocative description of the future for South Sydney sourced in its heritage.”

Client: South Sydney Council Location: Sydney, Australia Size: 240 ha Status: National Competition, First Prize 1995