Award winning architects in NSW

Our cellar door for Montoro Wines, on Cargo Road just outside Orange, received a NSW State Architecture Award in the Small Projects category. The building is a broad platform under an oversized roof, set in a field of native grasses and wildflowers, with glazing that opens the tasting area to the terrace so inside and outside become one space.

It is a modest building by size, and that is the point of the category: showing how much a well designed small project can do. Read more about our winery and cellar door architecture.

The Australian Institute of Architects recognises regional work through its NSW Country awards, and our projects have been honoured several times:

• James Barnett Award, for Montoro Wines.
• Commercial Award, for Montoro Wines.
• Award for Interiors, for March House.
• Award for Alterations and Additions, for March House.
• Commendation for Heritage, for March House.

Being recognised by our peers in regional NSW matters to us, because this is where we have chosen to practise. As award winning architects in the Central West, we would rather be judged on the places we know best.

March House is a 1910s Federation home on one of Orange's best streets. We restored the original house completely and added a light filled new form at the rear, linked to the old rooms by an internal courtyard. As well as its AIA NSW Country awards, the project received an Orange City Council Heritage Award, recognising that new work and old fabric can sit together with respect.

Heritage is a large part of our practice, from restoring Victorian country homes to careful additions in conservation areas. See our heritage architecture work for more.

See also our heritage home extensions.

Sweet Sour Salt, a well established modern Asian restaurant in Orange, moved into a converted 1920s house near the centre of town. We opened up the dining spaces, reworked the entry and moved the bar to the front, with colour and graphics as a key focus and an innovative low cost lighting solution that ties the rooms together.

The project was a Dulux National Colour finalist in the Commercial category, and the restaurant has become a destination dining experience in the Central West. It is proof that award winning design does not have to mean a big budget.

Read more about our hospitality architecture.

Architecture awards are judged by experienced practitioners, who look past the photographs at how well a building works, how it suits its place and how carefully it was made. We see them as a check on our work rather than the goal of it.

What they tell a new client is simple. The directors who will lead your project have a track record of doing it well, in regional NSW, across homes, heritage and commercial work. That is the most useful thing an award winning architect can offer: evidence, not promises.