St Kilda pier wins peak Victorian architecture award

St Kilda pier tops Victorian architecture awards

The A$53 million redevelopment of St Kilda pier, designed by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, Site Office Landscape Architecture and AW Maritime, has won the Victorian architecture medal – the top prize at the 2026 Australian Institute of Architects’ Victorian awards. It also received the Dimity Reed Melbourne prize and the Joseph Reed award for urban design. In March, it was co-winner in the built outcomes category at the national Urban Design awards.

The jury praised the project for balancing the competing demands of tourists, locals, fishers, ferries, marina users – and even penguins. “The project demonstrates how complex infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic,” they said.

Other winning projects

The former Sunbury Lunatic Asylum (built 1879) has been transformed into the Sunbury community arts and cultural precinct, winning the John George Knight award for heritage and the award for interior architecture. Architects Architecture Associates with Openwork were commended for turning an institution that once restricted human interaction into a space that fosters it.

Fieldwork’s 65 Dover Street in Cremorne claimed the Sir Osborn McCutcheon award for commercial architecture, featuring a rooftop recreation space with a half-size basketball court. The Henry Bastow award for educational architecture went to Baldasso Cortese’s Edmund Rice centre at Emmanuel College in Warrnambool.

In residential categories, sustainable refits of heritage structures dominated. Robert Simeoni Architects’ Palmerston Street house in Carlton (a former 1870s hotel) won the heritage award and the John and Phyllis Murphy award for alterations and additions. The Harold Desbrowe Annear award for new builds went to Edition Offices’ “House in a Garden,” an elevated timber form in the Birrarung flood plain.