The addition of the Photography category in the INDE.Awards program acknowledges the significant role photographers play in the architecture and design community, as well as their impact on the wider audience. Visual documentation and imagery are vital for storytelling, and this category specifically highlights the exceptional skills of photographers in capturing the essence of commercial projects within the Indo-Pacific region.

Nicole England was asked to photograph the new M&C Saatchi offices for Woods Bagot, located in the historic former Transport House on 99 Macquarie Street, one of the oldest buildings in Australia.

“With over 3000-square-metres of floor space between three levels, my brief was to capture the rich character between the different spaces and show how the carefully considered design had been introduced to reinvigorate and reimagine the heritage bones in the service of collaboration, story-telling and originality,” says Nicole England.

A special mention to Rohan Gemin Buddhipala who is shortlisted in the Graduate category. Rohan is a recent graduate from the University of Sydney and is now undertaking an Architecture Graduate role at Woods Bagot. The Graduate award recognises and celebrates a final year architecture student who shows outstanding promise in their chosen course. Through innovation and creativity the student aspires to make a mark on the profession and break new ground through design.

About Rohan’s project:

As an investigation into Queerness, this project pairs bathing and eating to reveal and celebrate intimacy and sensuality. Drawing from the cultural history of Oxford Street, Sydney, the project employs the literal underground to conceal and reveal, blurring the boundaries of public and private space to push the participant to experience their body in a new way.

The project is unique in its design as it repositions the role of architecture in a new light that can shape the culture of cities in a more human-oriented approach. It incorporates the theory of liberation through a dessert bar and bathhouse as a way to challenge the social and cultural norms of pleasure and how we obtain them as a call to rethink how rapidly growing urban fabrics are made and developed.

The purpose of the design is to connect communities to one another, people to each other and individuals to themselves and it essentially sets a blueprint to how cities should be planned and developed.

Cities should be built and enhanced by focusing on the cultures that made the current site so important to Australian history. By embracing what is so unique within urban fabrics, in the case of Oxford Street, its sensuality and freedom of expression, we unlock people’s ability to explore, challenge, and contribute to the cultural growth of Sydney.