Design Excellence Advisory
Client: Government Architect NSW
Location: Sydney, NSW
Year: 2018
Championing design quality across NSW
Brief
Part of the Department of Planning and Environment, the Government Architect NSW (GANSW) has undergone a major transformation over recent years to position itself as an advisor to other state and local government bodies providing strategic design leadership and guidance on how to improve design processes. The team at GANSW sought an expert and independent voice to help shape its policies and communications to effectively reach and impact the broader city-making sector.
Approach
Left Bank Co. was engaged to provide strategic advisory services to the team to shape their proposed built environment design policies and guidelines. Left Bank Co. worked closely with GANSW to design a suite of tools, strategies and processes as part of the Better Placed design policy. This included the planning and documentation of Design Competition guidelines for the delivery of State Significant projects and the design and implementation of the State’s Design Review Panel processes, to be tested through a State Design Review Panel pilot program.
We consulted with policy experts, industry representatives and other government departments to test, refine and improve these policies to ensure they were actionable and worked within the challenges and limitations of designing and delivering best practice in the built environment.
Impact
The careful crafting of these strategic policies and their effectiveness in driving excellence has helped reposition GANSW as a valuable authority in the NSW planning system, with their strategies and resources now underpinning a wide range of large scale development projects.
You can find the range of policies, tools and guidelines on the Government Architect NSW website here.