Inside Victoria’s best: A photo essay of the 2025 Architecture Award winners
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A cemetery depot, a boutique CBD hotel and a pub parklet have taken out top accolades in the 2025 Victorian Architecture Awards, writes Age city editor Cara Waters.
Hamish Lyons, chair of the juries, says the diversity of work in this year’s awards, presented at the Pullman Melbourne Albert Park on Friday evening, is greater than he has seen for a long time.
“It shows that architects are operating in every portfolio, every nook and corner from primary schools to top-end hotels from hospitals to factories,” he says. “It really was quite a diverse year, which is very encouraging.”
There were 19 awards handed out across 384 submissions. Here are eight of the major winners.
1/18
VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE MEDAL AND MELBOURNE PRIZE (Northern Memorial Park Depot, Searle x Waldron Architecture)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAID:
Hamish Lyons, chair of the juries, says the two-storey, timber building brings together a range of themes and narratives to do with community and workplace dignity.
“Previously, all of the people who use the building were dispersed across the site,” he says. “The grave diggers, the truck drivers, the administration, the office people, everybody who worked in that area, were all located disparately in various parts around and this brought them all together for the first time.”
2/18
VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE MEDAL AND MELBOURNE PRIZE (Northern Memorial Park Depot, Searle x Waldron Architecture) WHAT THE JUDGES SAID: Hamish Lyons, chair of the juries, says the depot is “a really unique piece of architecture” as it is built for trucks coming in and out as well as people arriving in a bereaved state and the people who work there every day and deal with death on a daily basis.
“It’s created a community of people that all worked in the same area but never really knew each other,” he says. “It’s got a folded green facade that works well against the existing trees, but it’s a perforated screen, so when you’re on the outside, you get this diaphanous view through to the interior. So it doesn’t feel like an administrative bunker or a depot. It actually feels like a building that’s inhabited by people, and it has a sense of welcome.”
3/18
COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE: (Hyde Melbourne Place, Kennedy Nolan)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAID: Boutique hotel Hyde Melbourne Place stands out in Melbourne’s CBD with its red brick facade and burnt orange interiors.
Hamish Lyons, chair of the juries, says the building is an “outstanding example of hospitality and hotel design” that breaks the mould for hotels.
4/18
COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE: (Hyde Melbourne Place, Kennedy Nolan)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAID: “They’ve really worked hard to make it feel like it is a Melbourne place,” Hamish Lyons says. “Even on the ground level, the various laneway connections, pedestrian connections, the food and beverage, they’ve done everything to make you feel like, if you’re a national or international traveller, you’re going to be staying in something that is Melbourne.”
Lyons says the hotel rooms themselves also have a domestic quality to them.
“You’re not in a generic, international, branded hotel,” he says. “You definitely feel like you’re in a crafted, domestic house in the sky.”
5/18
SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: (The Paddock, Crosby Architects)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: The Paddock is a sustainable cluster housing development in Castlemaine that offers a different style of regional living, according to the chair of the juries, Hamish Lyons. “So that’s really offering the idea of city, regional living, not relying upon the standard detached homestead house.”
6/18
SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: (The Paddock, Crosby Architects)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: “You are living in a community, and you gain the benefits of the community,” Hamish Lyons adds.
7/18
PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE: (Eva and Marc Besen Centre, Kerstin Thompson Architects)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: The established TarraWarra Museum of Art is a “revered” piece of architecture, putting pressure on Kerstin Thompson Architects to respect the style while designing the new Eva and Marc Besen Centre next door.
8/18
The museum and centre, in Healesville in Melbourne’s outer north-east, was founded by philanthropists and art collectors Eva and Marc Besen.
9/18
PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE: (Eva and Marc Besen Centre, Kerstin Thompson Architects)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: “Kerstin [Thompson] has done a job of making sure she respects the existing building, which is much loved in architecture, to create a building that has its own strength but clearly is aware of the fact that the foreground museum is the primary building on the site,” Hamish Lyons says. “It’s both strong but quiet and recessive at the same time.”Credit:Leo Shoewell
10/18
A new sculpture walk between the existing museum and the new centre allows people to engage with the art before they even step foot in the new building.Credit:Leo Shoewell
11/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES: (Hedge and Arbour House, Studio Bright)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: In a suburb in Melbourne’s north-east, this residential home integrates suburban and bushland elements.
12/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES: (Hedge and Arbour House, Studio Bright)
“A good residential project often brings with it a little twist that the client wasn’t first expecting,” Hamish Lyons says. “But fully appreciates the skill of the architect bringing it into play.”
13/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES: (Dunstan, SSdh)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: In the Newlands estate between Preston and Coburg North, this single-storey red clinker brick house with a terracotta-tiled roof and timber windows has been reimagined by SSdh in a strong example of adaptive reuse.
14/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – HOUSES: (Dunstan, SSdh)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY:
“It’s not a building that of its age would shout at you that it could be turned into a very gracious home,” Hamish Lyons says. “But the architects have done an excellent job there, respecting what’s a fairly straightforward building of its era, and working with that language to seamlessly put together a total house.”
15/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – MULTIPLE HOUSING: (Nightingale Preston, Breathe Architecture)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: Near the train station in Preston, these residential apartments are “not just standard dog boxes”, according to Hamish Lyons.
16/18
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – MULTIPLE HOUSING: (Nightingale Preston, Breathe Architecture)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: “It’s based on the idea of shared spaces, the idea of community, the idea of meeting people in the common laundromat washing areas, the idea of slightly better balconies,” judge Hamish Lyons says.
“It’s really pushing that architecture to say high-rise living doesn’t have to be cellular dormitories. It can actually be, I’m going to go and live in a building that is about community.”
17/18
SMALL PROJECT ARCHITECTURE: (Grace Darling Hotel Parklet, Kerry Kounnapis Architecture Practice)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY: Pub parklets filled Melbourne after the pandemic but the one at Grace Darling in Collingwood goes beyond the standard timber structure.
18/18
SMALL PROJECT ARCHITECTURE: (Grace Darling Hotel Parklet, Kerry Kounnapis Architecture Practice)
WHAT THE JUDGES SAY:
“The awards program is always trying to encourage the incredible diversity, from small to big, and, you know, expensive to economic and so forth,” judge Hamish Lyons says. “This is really a modest, beautiful piece of work.”
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