Wentworth Point Residences

The Project

The final three-hectare parcel at the tip of the Wentworth Point peninsula on Homebush Bay, the best waterfront site west of Barangaroo, as the competition jury described it. Billbergia Group had already delivered some 3,000 apartments across the broader ten-hectare precinct, and this last stage needed to be the best. FJMT was invited to compete, and I worked as Project Architect on the master planning response and early concept design.

The Challenge

The surrounding development told a cautionary tale. A decade of building had produced a repetitive pattern of mid-rise apartment blocks, competent but uninspired. This site, bounded by water on three sides with views to Sydney Olympic Park and the Parramatta River, deserved something better. The challenge was to break from the established typology and propose something with genuine landmark quality, while still dealing with real constraints: solar access, wind exposure on an open peninsula, flood risk on reclaimed industrial land, and basement limitations that ruled out deep excavation.

My Approach

I led the analysis of site constraints and developed massing strategies that maximised the waterfront condition rather than simply defaulting to the precinct's established patterns. The work involved arranging building forms to open up view corridors to the water, ensure solar access and cross-ventilation, and create a public domain that connected into the broader foreshore promenade network. Beyond the residential towers, the programme included a sports facility, childcare centre, and activated waterfront public spaces. I worked across all of these to ensure the master plan read as a cohesive community rather than a collection of buildings.

The Outcome

FJMT went on to win a two-stage international competition for the site in 2018, beating 3XN, Bates Smart, DKO, Durbach Block Jaggers, and Scott Carver/ARM Architecture. The project has since progressed as the Bennelong Cove precinct, delivering up to 1,200 homes including two 50-storey towers, alongside public open space, a foreshore promenade, and community facilities.

My contribution was at the earlier master planning stage, but the thinking that went into it, how to read a site's potential, how to push beyond the prevailing standard, how to balance commercial reality with design ambition, is exactly the kind of strategic architectural thinking I bring to every project at Yaxley Studio.