Furniture and fittings for Sydney’s public domain are set to undergo a sleek, home-grown makeover.
July 1st, 2013
The City of Sydney’s recent competition call for a new look for all public domain furniture was met with a surge of entries from across the country.

The winning submission comes from Sydney architectural and design outfit Tzannes Associates, revered for their focus on a research based design process.

Alex Tzannes and Allison Cronin – Tzannes Associates
In designing for Australia’s largest capital city the inspiration for the new collection drew on a variety of cues from culture to context.

“Public domain furniture contributes to a city’s distinctive identity,” explains Alec Tzannes, Director.

“Our aim was to create a family of elements reflecting Sydney’s unique cultural and urban context inspired by, among other things, the industrial elements such as the riveted steel plates and columns of the Harbour Bridge, and other structures throughout The Rocks, Pyrmont and Woolloomooloo”, said Tzannes.

In awarding the competition to a local design firm Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, praised the homegrown nature of the entire venture with the range being produced in Sydney by Australian Built Urban Design (ABUD) in Kurnell.

“These attractive new designs will create an elegant, unified look and feel for Sydney’s streets and outdoor areas. They reflect our vibrant outdoor culture and connect different parts of the city,” enthuses Ms Moore.

The full suite of seats, garbage bins, bollards, pedestrian light poles, dining barriers, a drinking fountain/ bubbler and tree guards are due to go into full production late in 2013 and rolled out across all corners of the local government area through to 2016.

Tzannes Associates
ABUD
(Hero Image: Carl Holder and Bruce Chadlowe, One half of the winning Tzannes Design Team).
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
As Woven Image celebrates 40 years, it introduces a new collection developed in collaboration with Australian artist Ben Goss, inspired by his original artwork Where the Kookaburra Sits into a vibrant collection of digitally printed EchoPanel® murals and patterns.
At 3daysofdesign 2026, AHEC’s immersive exhibition traced the journey of American hardwood from forest to finished product.
Aeron Chair’s new shades, Nightfall and Jasper, arrive with a sense of quiet cohesion – no bells and whistles, no loud technicolour; just two timeless, perfectly versatile near-neutrals. But the new hues aren’t just about colour – and their significance is much more profound than their surface-level subtlety might suggest.
In the last instalment of our three-part performance seating series, Alex Bain from Architectus explains why sitting well shouldn’t feel like sitting at all and explores an unexpected success metric of the hybrid workplace: the grounding power of emotional support.
Inspired by his furniture-maker father, Timothy Robertson explores the beauty of natural timber in an elegant seating range designed exclusively for Cult’s in-house Australian brand, Nau.
Blok Furniture recently teamed up with Geyer and Alternative Surfaces to create a custom result that makes you look twice.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
With an in-your-face campaign from the Design Institute of Australia, Write DESIGNER urges every design professional to identify themselves in the upcoming census.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the 2026 INDE.Awards recognised the outstanding people, projects and products shaping design across the Indo-Pacific.