Sanders Place
by NMBW Architecture Studio
Melbourne, Australia
Project details
Year
2025
Project year
2024
Gross area
1,385 m²
building area
744 m²
Project website
Location
Team credits
architects
- NMBW Architecture Studio -
Lucinda McLean,
Nigel Bertram,
Marika Neustupny,
Daniel Bisetto,
Rosanna Blacket,
David Mason,
Andrej Vodstrcil,
Harry Bardoel.
Contributing partners
Openwork,
Finding Infinity,
FORM Engineers,
Never Stop Group.
commissioned by
Tripple
Located on the edge of an industrial and residential zone in Melbourne, Australia, Sanders Place reimagines a two-storey brick factory as a co-working hub that encourages interaction, wellbeing and environmental responsibility. Through acts of both removal and addition, NMBW Architecture Studio turned an inward-looking, windowless structure into a light-filled, porous building that breathes and grows. The introduction of five courtyards cuts through the former factory’s solidity, creating new spatial, atmospheric and circulatory logics. These openings invite sunlight, ventilation and plant life deep into the interior, while connecting the occupants with the street and surrounding laneways.
The decision to work with the existing building rather than demolish it forms the core of the project’s ethos. The architects treated demolition as a design process in itself, using careful subtraction to reveal opportunities for reuse. While the concrete frame remained, the building envelope was completely transformed. It was wrapped in new layers of insulation and shading, dramatically improving its thermal performance. Internally, a double-height courtyard now serves as a living core – its garden shaded by a retractable greenhouse cloth, with trees growing through a void cut into the first-floor slab. Around this central space, a sequence of smaller courtyards creates varying microclimates, from quiet green refuges to a working kitchen garden, each fostering social interaction and sensory awareness.
From the earliest stages, NMBW worked with sustainability consultants Finding Infinity and landscape architects Openwork to analyse the site’s conditions and develop a holistic environmental strategy. The building now generates its own energy through rooftop solar panels and uses a heat recovery ventilation system to maintain comfort year-round. The emphasis on low-tech solutions – natural ventilation, daylighting and user interaction – ensures that sustainability remains experiential rather than hidden in mechanical systems. Occupants are directly involved in maintaining the building’s rhythm: opening windows, tending the garden, composting food waste and adjusting shading as the seasons shift.
The design also celebrates resourcefulness through material reuse. Every element removed from the site was catalogued and reincorporated wherever possible. Concrete cores were stacked to define garden edges, reclaimed bricks were used for paving and patching, and structural timbers were transformed into wall linings and furniture. In collaboration with Melbourne-based woodworker Raven Mahon, NMBW crafted benches from demolished Oregon floor joists, their intricate joints exposing the dialogue between found and newly cut timber. These gestures of care, patience and precision give Sanders Place its distinctive tactile and emotional depth.
NMBW Architecture Studio – founded by Lucinda McLean, Marika Neustupny and Nigel Bertram – is a Melbourne-based practice known for its place-based methodology that foregrounds materiality, cultural experience and the relationships between people and environment. Their portfolio spans adaptive reuse, housing, education and public architecture, consistently demonstrating how small, precise interventions can have large social and ecological effects. Alongside practice, the directors teach and research at Melbourne University and Monash University, linking academic inquiry with built work in a continuous feedback loop. Their approach is collaborative, grounded in dialogue with clients, craftspeople and communities, producing design outcomes that are inclusive, sustainable and culturally responsive.
The prize money will fund a design-research initiative exploring how public architecture in Melbourne and Sydney can be revitalized through decolonizing design, adaptive reuse and multi-sensory engagement. Focusing on disused colonial-era buildings often located on significant Indigenous sites, NMBW will investigate how to transform these structures into inclusive, living public spaces. The research will unfold in two phases: first, through developing and testing guiding principles across selected sites, and later by producing detailed retrofit proposals, large-scale models and drawings for exhibition and publication. The aim is to generate tangible frameworks for reconnecting architecture with land, ceremony and community – preserving the past while opening pathways for cultural and ecological renewal.
- Information for the project text was provided by NMBW Architecture Studio -
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Advisory Committee Statement
‘Sanders Place’ receives the award for Social Engagement for transforming a closed industrial building into an open, welcoming co-working space that reconnects people with nature and community. The project skilfully reimagines an existing factory through acts of careful subtraction and reuse, introducing five courtyards – including a central garden where trees grow through the floor – that bring light, air and life into the building. With rooftop solar panels, heat recovery ventilation and extensive material reuse, Sanders Place exemplifies how sustainability and human wellbeing can be integrated with beauty and restraint. It demonstrates how architects can ‘liberate themselves from chains’ to create meaningful, ecological and socially engaging architecture, even in highly regulated urban contexts.