St Kilda pier wins top Victorian architecture award with judges praising its ‘civic’ design and humor | Construction

A reimagined St Kilda pier has added honors to its growing cabinet, taking out top gongs at the Victorian Institute of Architects’ Victoria awards for 2026.

A $53m Victorian government project designed by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, alongside Site Office Landscape. Construction and AW Maritime, picked up the Victorian architecture medal on Friday, an award given to the most successful project of the year.

It also won the Dimity Reed Melbourne award and the Joseph Reed urban design award. In the month of March, he won in the category of public exits National Urban Design Awards.

The project has sparked controversy, including a failed attempt by Parks Victoria to establish access to a paying-pier penguin colony. On Friday, a Victorian judging panel praised the project for successfully balancing the interests of visitors, locals, fishermen, boaters, marina users – and even the penguins.

“This work shows how complex architecture can also be playful, social and cultural,” the judges said.

Building on recent national and New South Wales awards, sustainability, resource efficiency and community design were key features of the Victorian awards.

Jury chairman, architect and student Simon Knott said this year’s outstanding projects defined their ability to go beyond technical documentation and prioritize social interaction.

“(They) have cherished symbols that have passed their duty as part of the development process,” he said in a statement. “We’ve seen a number of community projects that are fun meeting places where sustainable community design has been at the forefront, taking existing building materials and turning them into fun places.”

Even sites with a “bad reputation” have been “completely changed by clever hands,” Knott said.

One of the oldest facilities is the former Sunbury Lunatic Asylum, built in 1879, renamed the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum in 1905 and as the Caloola Training Center in 1985.

After being part of the Victoria University campus for almost two decades, it has now been transformed into a center for the arts and culture of Sunbury, a project that has won gongs, including the John George Knight award for heritage and the award for interior design.

The judges praised the design by Architecture Associates with Openwork as a way to use the school’s previously defined design and public preservation.

“Good performance is required when a building built to restrict and exclude people becomes one that celebrates coming together,” the judges said.

‘Letting the story of the house unfold… sometimes directly, sometimes by looking at the past… is a multi-faceted art. Architects use all these skills. “

The commitment to transforming unused urban space into functional and flexible spaces was evident in Fieldwork’s design for 65 Dover Street in Cremorne, which won the Sir Osborn McCutcheon award for commercial architecture.

Fieldwork was praised for its “beautiful and visually appealing” response to the facility, which includes a rooftop recreation area for employees with a half-court basketball court.

“65 Dover St sets a new benchmark for commercial architecture at this level – sophisticated, graceful and refined,” said the judges.

The Henry Bastow Award for educational architecture went to the Edmund Rice Center for Baldasso Cortese at Emmanuel College. Dressed in Colourbond manor red, the Warrnambool campus has three learning areas – intelligence, communication and cognition – all centered on a central courtyard.

In the residential sector, the winners were guided by the sustainable renovation of the heritage based on the traditional “reconstruction” method of demolition.

Robert Simeoni Architects’ Palmerston Street House in Calrton received a heritage award and the John and Phyllis Murphy award for alterations and additions.

The architect’s design was admired for not rethinking the old hotel of the 1870s, while discussing the high cost of construction and the lack of amenities.

“It works directly, honestly and poetically within these limits to find the language of the place and the things that delight in its wealth,” said the judges.

For new architecture, the Harold Desbrowe Annear award went to the Edition Offices’ “House in a Garden”, a spectacular, high-rise wooden structure on the roof of the Birrarung Valley, offering “cinematic immersion in a landscaped setting”.