USYD Architecture, Design and Planning Graduate Exhibition 2025

Back to Briefs

An avenue of arched trees, an outdoor space that invite conversation and connection.

The auditorium is a non-hierarchical performance space that employs a backdrop of treetops, inviting in light, air, and life.

A model photograph in plan, illustrating the overall composition within the existing trees and the university’s main-road entrance.

Visualising the east elevation: a communal front façade softened by greenery, with a glimpse of the tree line behind.

Visualising the west facade, an outdoor social space on the ground level and a backdrop for preparation and performance on the upper levels.

Isometric of composition: The Gadigal Centre of Excellence | Arched Avenue

Arched Avenue

My design emerges from an existing arched avenue of trees at the University of Sydney’s Ross Street gateway — a shaded, filtered space that hints at past human presence and inspires its reactivation as a shared outdoor environment. Designed as an Indigenous cultural centre for the Gadigal and wider community, the building adopts the tree arch as its guiding motif, most clearly expressed in the double-height gallery formed by interlocking steel arches that invite visitors in from both the street and campus. Events, exhibitions, workshops, ceremonies, and conversations extend into sheltered outdoor spaces, maintaining a connection to Country and ensuring Indigenous voices and practices remain visible and valued in urban Sydney.

Arched Avenue