Chippendale, Sydney, Australia
Once the historic Kent Brewery on the former Carlton and United Breweries site, The Brewery in Sydney’s Central Park has been transformed into a vibrant commercial and retail hub.
The public can now engage with one of Sydney’s most historic places in a way that’s never been possible before.
Brewery Yard won an 2025 International Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
The groundwork for The Brewery and Brewery Yard’s transformation began over two decades ago with Tzannes and Cox Richardson’s competition winning masterplan design for the $2 billion Central Park precinct. The masterplan transformed a brownfield site into a vibrant, dense, mixed-use neighbourhood by activating and interconnecting streets, creating good pedestrian experiences and providing generous and safe public spaces.
As part of the Stage Two work, the architects successfully identified the most appropriate function for the significant Brewery Yard building through a series of studies. Tzannes was engaged in 2021 to rejuvenate the heritage building once more.
The design brings the building back to life for the public, creating a welcoming atmosphere and enhancing community interaction. Stage One of the Brewery Yard project, completed by Tzannes in 2014, included the introduction of the visually striking cooling tower for the tri-generation plant atop the heritage structure, establishing a memorable landmark visible from across the precinct. The building’s conservation from Stage One work has been internationally celebrated and hailed by the judges of the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation as ‘a prototype for repurposing industrial heritage in a sustainable, forward-looking manner.’
The second and final stage is for new clients IP Generation, who took on the vital task of restoring and reinterpreting the original heritage fabric for contemporary use as commercial offices, retail and hospitality.
This work also included the sensitive creation of new floors connected to existing floors behind the historic facade to create flexible workspaces that maximised the building’s potential as a commercial office. A new floor and roof were also sympathetically added atop the southern building whilst respecting a solar plane that protects the amenity of surrounding public open spaces without being visible from the south views where the original facade is of the highest heritage significance.
Most importantly and central to the most recent phase was the design and development of a through-site link and an outdoor plaza that allows the public to interact closely with the Brewery Yard for the first time. Previously cordoned off and abandoned after Stage One, the site’s activation from Stage Two as a lively public space complements Central Park’s vision to become a vibrant inner city neighbourhood with high public amenity and accessibility.
With tech anchor tenants like Afterpay, The Brewery not only preserves history but also fuels Sydney’s Innovation and Technology Precinct, supporting a vibrant, interconnected and urban community for the future.
The re-development of the Brewery Yard demonstrates how a highly efficient and progressive power generation technology, can deliver gas-generated electricity, including hot and cold water to the surrounding precinct and be recycled to house contemporary uses. Designed within a heritage context, this development achieves significant community benefits, as well as revitalising an existing landmark for the precinct.
Architects: Tzannes
Design Team: Alec Tzannes, Ben Green, James Marrinan, Yi-han Cao, Kevin Mak, Matilda Gollan ,Vicky Feng, Arddy Berylian, George Korban, Lily Tandeani, John Suh, Iris Zhu, Tasman Shen, Juliana Conceicao, Nicole Larkin, Daniel Gullan, Connor Denyer, Amanda Roberts, Amanda Cooper, Katharine Turner and Nico Locane
Landscape Architects: Turf Design Studio
Interiors: The Studio Collaborative
Tenant: Block
General Contractor: Icon Construction Australia Pty Ltd.
Client: IP Generation
Builder: ICON
Project Manager: Johnstaff
Photographer: Ben Guthrie / John Gollings
