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Matt Davis

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<h3>The Maitland Mental Health Rehabilitation project establishes a new benchmark in therapeutic environments for mental health care in regional NSW.</h3>
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Located on Wonnarua Country and nestled between a rocky escarpment and a wetland, the design sensitively integrates with the landscape, transforming a former brickworks site into a calm, nature-connected healing space.
The core design driver is to provide spaces for healing, with every decision — material, spatial, and environmental — rooted in the principles of connection, dignity, and care.
The architecture and interior design work to deliberately counter institutional stereotypes: long, low-pitched roofs, a restrained material palette, and generous courtyards give the project a distinctly residential character. The buildings cascade along the natural contours of the site, reinforcing a strong sense of place and visual connection to Country. The central arrival space serves as a threshold between indoors and outdoors, linking the internal program to the bushland, and creating an immediate sense of calm upon entry.

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Designed to support recovery, the built form is composed of small-scale residential units organised around light-filled courtyards and open-plan communal areas. Each unit features a mix of social, sensory, and private spaces to suit a wide range of patient needs. Chill-out zones, sensory rooms, and therapy spaces are designed to promote self-management and de-escalation. Skylights and large windows flood interiors with daylight, while external views and access to landscaped courtyards help reduce stress and support daily routines.
The material palette draws from the site’s geology and surrounding bushland. A base of warm masonry grounds the buildings and references the site’s industrial past, while fine fenestration elements reflect the verticality of local eucalypts.
Special attention has been given to staff areas, with efficient and safe circulation, good lines of visibility, and access to outdoor areas for respite. Importantly, the gathering space adjacent to the entry is the anchor space for the project. Offering expansive views across the landscape, the main lobby is welcoming and supports family visits, community interaction, and art therapies.
On this health campus, the landscape is not just a backdrop, it&#8217;s an essential part of the healing process. Walking paths, activity and gathering spaces are placed amongst existing trees and regenerated environments. Over time, building users will plant and manage the therapeutic garden spaces.
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This project was born out of a highly collaborative, multi-disciplinary process led by Bates Smart (architecture and interior design), Turf Design Studio (landscape architecture), Studio Semaphore (wayfinding design), and Yerrabingin (Connecting with Country).
The result is a building shaped by many voices — deeply rooted in place, grounded in lived experience, and driven by a shared commitment to human-centred mental health care.
The NSW Government is investing in the Maitland Mental Health Rehabilitation Project as part of the Statewide Mental Health Infrastructure Program, which is being delivered in partnership by Health Infrastructure and Hunter New England Local Health District.

Maitland Mental Health Rehabilitation 

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<h3>Redfern North Eveleigh is imagined as a diverse and distinct precinct within the site’s historical context, and a place for commercial enterprise and innovation.</h3>

Place strategy reflects the industrial heritage and gritty character of the surrounding Redfern and Darlington neighbourhoods, drawing on those aspects of site and its myriad uses. The masterplan delivered for Transport for NSW reimagines the railyards as a link between areas and introduces a network of open spaces, distinctive building types and a pedestrian-friendly promenade.
The framework’s simplicity allows for flexible staging and establishes a legible built form relating to the differing scales of the neighbourhood. Low-rise linear buildings respond to the scale of Wilson Street, whilst a cluster of larger buildings provide the critical mass to support the ambitions of an innovation precinct.
A variety of public and intimate spaces celebrate the legacy and linear connection between the site and Redfern Station. A new public square at the heart of the precinct integrates the sweeping rail tracks and Paint Shop building. The former Suburban Car Workshop is adapted to create a vast covered outdoor plaza to support outdoor programming including community and cultural events.
North Eveleigh has long been a place of importance for Aboriginal peoples – thousands of years pre-contact, but also as a place of Indigenous employment, opportunity, and social connection, in the 20th century. The masterplan and approach to restoring Country seeks to re-establish the site as a place that is inviting, relevant, inclusive, and culturally safe for the First Nations community.

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Redfern North Eveleigh

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<h3>Woolworths Waterloo is an urban renewal project that provides housing for the growing Waterloo and Green Square neighbourhoods.</h3>
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The precinct is enlivened by a high-quality public domain, a full-line supermarket, specialty retail and commercial office space.
The site holds a prominent corner position on Bourke and McEvoy Streets. It is defined by an established tree canopy that provides outlook, habitat, shade and shelter. A family of buildings frame a generous courtyard, their plans step and splay around the mature trees.

Three residential buildings are oriented to promote view sharing and protection from traffic noise. A diversity of housing types include studios, 1-, 2-, 3-bed apartments and 2-storey terraces.
Apartment buildings have a 5-7 storey street wall, articulated to reduce visual mass when viewed from the street. Façades embrace repetition, variation and texture via a deceptively simple palette. Colours, materials and geometries recall Country, particularly the coastal landscapes and foliage that were once endemic to the area.
A commercial building marks the north-east corner of the site. Its slender form provides a compelling space for a small-format workplace. At ground, the entry to the supermarket below optimises precinct activation.

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A series of through site links further energise the ground plane, converging in a retail plaza at the north end. A public laneway connecting Bourke and Young Streets is bookended by artworks from Bard artist Darrell Sibosado. The glowing LED works reinterpret Indigenous pearl shell designs as ancestral symbols etched onto walls. Landscaping throughout the precinct prioritises native species, promoting biodiversity and comfortable micro-climates.

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Woolworths Waterloo

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<h3>Our design approach to 91 George Street is anchored by two elements: the place-specific characteristics of Burramattagal Country, where the site is located, and the Colonial Georgian architecture of the adjoining Perth House.</h3>

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The design challenge was to complement the symmetry and proportions of Perth House, while reducing the building’s lobby footprint to maximise the heritage curtilage and provide sightlines to the historic residence.
The proposed 60-storey tower design aims to deliver a high quality and sustainable office building set within this historic context in the Parramatta CBD. The project adopts a ‘start with Country’ approach and embeds ideas developed in collaboration with local Traditional Owners that will catalyse opportunities for Aboriginal culture to flourish.
A shared basement access enables the creation of a new landscaped square, Burramatta Place, activated by restaurants and cafés. The public domain is open and accessible, weaving together Burramatta Place with the building forecourt and formal garden around Perth House into a cohesive place that benefits the community and tenants. The lobby is raised from George Street and flanked by a ravine garden on one side and a balcony on the other which overlooks the new public square and stitches together the tower’s public domain.

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The façades incline outwards at the buildings base, interpreting the verandah of Perth House in a timber structure that creates a sheltered and screened base. Cantilevered verandah-like edges on each floor provide opportunities for collaboration and circulation within a human-scaled space. At mid-point, the façade breaks to reveal communal sky verandahs, which provide outdoor opportunities for collaboration and working.
Passive high-performance façades, natural ventilation and low carbon materials create a sustainable design capable of being carbon neutral.

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91 George Street

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<h3>The vision for Telopea transforms the 13.4-hectare site in Western Sydney into an integrated, diverse and vibrant precinct, delivering approximately 4,700 dwellings including a mix of market, social and affordable housing.</h3>

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The design celebrates the site’s existing bushland hillside character through streets and building forms built along the contours and arranged to retain the site’s most significant trees. The masterplan repairs and reconnects the fragmented ecosystem using green infrastructure to create a biodiversity corridor between existing wildlife protection areas of Vineyard Creek Reserve and Ponds Creek Reserve.
A stepped sequence of accessible open spaces organised around a new pedestrian oriented civic spine not only connects the station to the creek and celebrates the site’s existing trees, but also improves permeability, ensuring an accessible journey for all and connecting people to transport, retail and public destinations.
The new town centre‘s range of community facilities include a retail precinct featuring supermarkets, food and beverage and speciality retail, as well as a community centre, library, childcare, and a combined church, residential aged care and independent living units.

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Day one amenity is provided in the first stage of development which includes upgrades to Telopea light rail plaza, pedestrian and cycleway upgrades, and a new neighbourhood park.
The design aims to deliver on a range of sustainability measures that promote health and wellbeing to both the residents and the public domain, including 6 Star Green Star Communities, 5 Star Green Star buildings, carbon neutral integrated infrastructure and WELL community certification for the precinct.
The proposed redevelopment is part of the NSW Government Communities Plus program, which seeks to revitalise Telopea by upgrading its current social housing assets, integrating a mix of uses delivered over multiple stages, due for completion by 2040.

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Telopea

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<h3>Hunter + Pitt is set to become the world’s tallest timber hybrid tower, and one of the world’s most sustainable buildings.</h3>
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The project sets a new benchmark for office towers in its blending of architecture, lifestyle, wellbeing and environmental credentials.
It occupies a pivotal CBD location on the corner of Hunter and Pitt Streets, servicing the adjacent Hunter Street Metro and nearby Martin Place Metro stations. It retains the heritage Pangas House and adds a 55-storey timber hybrid tower above. A new 3-storey podium building will bring restaurants into this part of the CBD, along with a public roof garden.
The distinct tower form is articulated in three stacked volumes, separated by village decks with outdoor terraces. A tapered form provides solar access to the laneway below. The crown accommodates two levels of communal space for work and play.

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At ground, the design responds to place, culture and Country. Public artworks focus on the importance of water to the Gadigal People, especially the original Tank Stream that flowed underneath. A new laneway connects Pitt Street to the Hunter Street Metro. It creates a two-level public space, activated with retail and dining and converging in a protected forecourt. Materials speak of Sydney; sandstone offcuts quarried from the site during excavation clad the podium.
Principles of reduce, reuse and restore drive the tower’s sustainability. The project prioritises high performance, access to fresh air, sunlight and landscape, and circularity of materials. Photovoltaics are integrated directly into the glass façade. This forms a solar skin that can provide the tower with 15% of its energy requirements. Timber hybrid floor structures are used for 80% of the tower, while dematerialised workplace interiors reduce embodied carbon.

Matt Davis

Director

BArch (Hons), RAIA

NSW Nominated Architect 7449 | SA Architect 2805