Today's apartments need to be connected to community, nature and amenities. One international architectural firm is having a big impact on what this looks like for Australians.
With 18 locations spread out across North America, Australia & NZ, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, it can be easy to forget that architectural firm Woods Bagot traces its roots back to its founding in Adelaide.
A rendering of the reimagined Fitzroy Gasworks site, which will feature two Woods Bagot-designed apartment projects being developed by Milieu. Image: Development Victoria
But even with a presence on projects like central London office tower 85 Gracechurch Street, Dubai skyscraper Six Senses, and international airports in San Francisco and Seattle, the firm has maintained a distinctly Australian presence – and has had a particular impact recently in helping shape some of the country’s most interesting conversations about how we build both homes and communities.
For all its international reach and accolade, Woods Bagot’s Australian projects are deeply grounded in place – culturally, climatically and socially – and its residential work is helping shape some of the country’s most interesting conversations about how we live.
"What feels most distinctive about our work in Australia is the way local intelligence genuinely leads global capability, rather than the other way around," said Ana Sá, Woods Bagot’s global residential sector leader.
"Right now, the flavour is one of restraint and responsiveness," she commented of current Australian architecture.
"Good architecture here doesn’t announce itself first; it earns its relevance over time.”
According to Ms Sá, the firm's Australian residential work is less as a signature aesthetic more a set of principles: listening to communities, to Country, to climate, and to how people actually live their everyday lives.
In practice, that translates into generosity – in daylight, in shared space, in connection to landscape – even on tight urban sites. Ms Sá sees that shift as a “recalibration of quality within density”.
This feels especially resonant in Australia today, as the old lifestyle ideal – the standalone house, the quarter-acre block, the private patch of green – comes under pressure from every direction. Affordability, density and sustainability are all reshaping what buyers are looking for, and what housing now needs to offer.
Downsizers want security, privacy and proximity to services, while younger households are increasingly looking to apartments for access to lifestyle, work, culture and community.
"Importantly, this shift doesn’t signal a retreat from the outdoors. If anything, the year-round connection to landscape has become more essential in higher‑density living,” Ms Sá noted.
In that shift, Woods Bagot is helping make the case that higher-density and multi-residential living can feel less like compromise and instead desirable way to live. It's an ethos that exists across the world's major cities but has been somewhat slow to catch on in Australia.
But now, things are changing, and Woods Bagot are an important part of that movement.
Mason & Main in Merrylands features both build-to-rent and build-to-sell homes in its western Sydney community. Image: realestate.com.au
Across the country, the studio is pushing apartment living beyond the old clichés towards more landscape, more connection, more convenience, more useful amenity, and more homes that feel grounded in their neighbourhood rather that dropped onto it.
“There’s a quiet confidence in creating buildings that feel inevitable in their context, rather than imposed,” Ms Sá reflected.
In practice, that principle shows up differently across the studio’s current Australian work.
At Aura in North Sydney – a 386-luxury-apartment development beside the new Victoria Cross Metro Station – the focus is on how high-density living can feel both elevated and enduring.
“The project gives back to the City of Sydney by contributing meaningful public value at both street and skyline levels,” said Ms Sá.
Here, a ground plane opens up to pedestrian connections, retail, dining and landscaped spaces that strengthen links with the surrounding neighbourhood, while supporting “high-quality high-density living” above. Flexible apartments and winter gardens are intended to improve both environmental performance and longevity, allowing residents to remain in the city through different life stages.
At Mason & Main in Merrylands – a major Western Sydney development from Coronation featuring 849 apartments offering both build-to-rent and build-to-sell homes – the focus is on the fundamentals that make apartment living work over time.
As Ms Sá put it, “Core principles like daylight, orientation, cross-ventilation and access to green space are no longer seen as 'nice-to-haves'. They’re increasingly foundational to good residential design".
Ms Sá pointed to the project as evidence that “strong ESD [Environmentally Sustainable Design] outcomes and design ambition are not mutually exclusive,” and that higher-density housing can be “thermally comfortable, naturally lit, and attuned to seasonal and daily rhythms".
A rendering of Ripponlea Terrace, under development by Milieu. Image: realestate.com.au
In Melbourne, Ripponlea Terrace from Milieu, which is part of the broader Elsternwick Gardens masterplan, shows those same principles in a more heritage-led expression.
Peter Miglis, Woods Bagot design director and regional design leader, says the ambition with the project is “to create a residential environment that feels like living within a garden, rather than adjacent to one".
Here, “landscape becomes the organising principle” – shaping movement, orientation and the experience of shared spaces – while “heritage is approached through scale, materiality and proportion rather than imitation”.
The result is a project that feels embedded in its context rather than imposed on it.
At Fitzroy Gasworks, the studio is designing two residential buildings within the major redevelopment with Milieu: 146 dwellings in total, including 75 terrace-informed homes and 71 softer, garden-edged dwellings with layered balconies and planting.
For Mr Miglis, the project is compelling because it brings together “density, sustainability and community in a way that feels genuinely integrated rather than layered on”, while showing how former industrial land can become a walkable mixed-use neighbourhood that “prioritises people over cars”.
And these principles are not new talking points, but long-running threads through the studio’s completed work.
Assembly Apartments in North Melbourne, now more than 15 years old, is one of the clearest examples. Ms Sá says it has “stood the test of time”, with ideas that later became embedded in Victoria’s Better Apartment Design Standards.
“Things like rooftop terraces and shared amenity were not a requirement,” she says, “but we put it into that project and subsequently … it’s become a requirement.”
Mr Miglis described Assembly as “a village on a hill” – a large site broken into smaller buildings around a central courtyard and laneways, all in service of “breaking down scale and creating intimacy”.
More broadly, he says, Woods Bagot is always trying to break larger precincts down “through a series of buildings”, rather than creating “the big monolithic object that arrives and feels quite alien". The aim is architecture that feels like it belongs.
Piccolo House - Gore Street is a 49-home development designed to cater to downsizers looking to live close to the city. Image: Woods Bagot
Gore Street in Fitzroy, Woods Bagot’s most recently completed development with developer Piccolo, shows how that same thinking can foster community in a very lived way. The 49 residences are designed largely for downsizers and rightsizers.
“The residents are loving it. There’s a huge community spirit,” he says. “It’s a bit like an older version of Melrose Place.”
What people are moving into, he suggests, is not really an apartment in the reductive sense, but something closer to a residence, with “house-like proportions” and the social ease that comes from carefully judged shared amenity. At Gore Street, that includes a guest suite that can be booked instead of an underused extra bedroom, a workshop where residents can borrow a drill or fix a bike, and a communal dog wash.
For their next collaboration, Piccolo House and Woods Bagot have thoughtfully planned 18 Barry Street in Kew – commencing construction this month – that includes many of the same amenities as Gore Street but with a particular focus on wellness, with elements like an indoor thermal pool, cold plunge, sauna, gym and yoga room.
A previous project in Kew, St Clare, was also uniquely tailored to the incoming residents as well as the neighbourhood. A fully occupied independent-living project for over-55s, it responds to an ageing population that is downsizing but still wants the spirit and quality of a standalone home.
Ms Sá pointed to it as an example of architecture, landscape and community planning working together – something they're always ultimately aiming for. Here, she pointed to how it supports “dignity, wellbeing and long-term adaptability.”
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