A redesigned St Kilda Pier just won the top award at Victoria's architecture competition. On June 19, 2026, the project — created by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, working with Site Office and AW Maritime — took out the 2026 Victorian Architecture Awards.

This isn't the pier's first prize. Earlier in the year, in March, it had already won the 2026 Australian Urban Design Awards, a national honor. Two major awards in one year is unusual and puts the project on the map as a reference point for waterfront projects across Australia.

What the redesign was about

The project focused on four things: giving people more ways to use the pier, improving comfort and amenity, making it safer, and making it accessible to everyone. According to the Australian Institute of Architects, this approach — treating an aging public space as something meant for people to enjoy, not just a piece of infrastructure — has become the standard way Parks Victoria now thinks about refreshing its coastal and riverside structures.

Why St Kilda Pier matters

St Kilda Pier is one of Melbourne's most recognisable foreshore landmarks. It sits where several things meet: recreational boating, quiet public spaces where people come to relax, and marine life. A colony of Little Penguins lives nearby, and there are other sensitive ecosystems to consider. That layered complexity is why the team needed specialist marine engineering expertise from AW Maritime — the pier has to withstand wave impacts, tidal shifts, saltwater corrosion, and still allow boats to come and go during construction.

The inclusion of Site Office, a landscape architecture firm, alongside the architects signals that attention to how the pier connects to its surroundings wasn't an afterthought. These kinds of waterfront projects often stumble when the designed structure and the public spaces around it don't fit together well. Here, that connection was clearly worked out early.

What comes next

Two consecutive major awards will likely keep this project in conversations about how Australia should build and rebuild waterfronts. The more practical question is whether it influences how Parks Victoria approaches its other coastal sites. That's where the real impact will be felt.