Collins and Turner have been confirmed as winner of the City of Sydney Design excellence competition for 40a+40b O’Dea Avenue in Waterloo.

Carried out for property group JQZ, and designed in collaboration with Environa Studio, the project comprises 3 mixed use buildings including a 20 storey residential tower on Sam Sing Street, and 4 storey mixed use retail and residential structures on Archibald Avenue and Hatbox Place.

The project aims to establish new standards of amenity for inner city living, by including over 2500sqm of landscaped external space in the form of gardens, roof terraces, and planted balconies across the full height of the tower and low-rise buildings, consistent with City of Sydney’s recent initiatives to encourage the use of green roofs and urban farms across the inner city.

The tower form is divided into two slender blocks, separated by open air sky gardens which link to open circulation corridors.

A high performance glazed facade with variegated aluminium mesh sunshading gives a sleek contemporary appearance to the east and west elevations, contrasting with the full height planted voids that further characterise each elevation.