Entries have now opened for the Gold Coast Urban Design Awards 2020. The program, inaugurated in 1998, aims to celebrate excellence in urban design and the built environment across the Gold Coast region.
The organizers of the program state that good urban design “offers significant benefits to the community in terms of health, wellbeing, productivity, efficiency and creativity; long-term cost savings and returns in the management and flexibility of city-wide spaces and property; sustainable solutions in problem-solving and decision making which reduce the physical impact on our environmental resources through a reduction in pollution and waste, and [can encourage] innovation in design and [influence] policymakers, businesses, industry and the community to make smart decisions that will support growth in the city and attract new businesses.”
In 2017, the most recent edition of the awards, the masterplanning, design and delivery of the Parklands project that created a new community on the Gold Coast, by AAA (Archipelago, Arkhefield, ARM Architecture) with Lat27, won the Excellence in Urban Design Award and Helen Josephson Award for Urban Design Leadership. The Surfers Riverside Edge Treatment Project by GHD and Gold Coast Waterways Authority that upgraded the public realm along the Nerang River, and a series of tactical urbanism projects by City Place Making, City of Gold Coast both received Special Mentions in the same year.
All commercial, public and community projects, from schools and streetscapes to high rise buildings are eligible to enter the program, with entries to be judged by a panel from the fields of architecture, planning, landscape architecture and construction. The panel will be chaired by Michael Lavery, director at M3 Architecture and president of the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Entries to the awards close on 21 August, with winners to be announced on 9 October. For more information on the program and how to enter, visit here.
