This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games - an event remembered as "the green games" for its environmental legacy. In preparation for this global spectacle, a team of built environment professionals came together to deliver an ambitious and lasting urban masterplan - among them, architects Lawrence Nield and Philip Thalis.
In this episode of Design Speaks Weekly, Lawrence and Philip draw on this experience to consider the opportunities for city-making in the lead-up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Lawrence, a founding principal and director of BVN and recipient of the 2012 Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal, was head of masterplanning for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He has since been involved with the delivery of Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympic Games. Philip is a founding principal of Hill Thalis Architecture and Urban Projects, who, working with several collaborators, won a national competition for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Athlete's Village at Homebush Bay. Philip is also a former City of Sydney councillor and the recipient of the 2024 Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
During the conversation, Lawrence remarked that the goal of Olympic masterplanning should be to create "a piece of the city, not a sporting park." He points out that while many Olympic parks around the world fall into disuse, those that are well integrated into the urban fabric tend to thrive long after the games.
Philip reflected that at Homebush, the real opportunity was the scale of the site - more than 800 hectares of publicly owned land - but the missed opportunity was not properly connecting the precinct to the broader city's transport network. He recalled meeting with government departments to propose a through rail line, but there were no plans, so they ended up repurposing existing lines to make a loop to handle the crowds of more than 300,000 people a day. Now, decades later, they're adding metro and light rail to the precinct - infrastructure that was proposed in the 1992 Olympic Village scheme developed by Hill Thalis and collaborators.
"I think when you talk about legacy, you really need to talk about increasing the capability for city-making. This is the challenge for Brisbane and this is where Sydney could have done much better," said Philip.
Design Speaks Weekly is presented in partnership with the Australian Institute of Architects and with support from Lysaght. A fresh episode will be delivered every Tuesday. You can listen to it on major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts.
For more reflections on Sydney 2000, read the archival article Identity and the Olympics by Harry Margait, published in Architecture Australia (Sep/Oct 2000), and an article by architectural photographers Patrick Bingham-Hall and John Gollings, who were each commissioned to document the games in progress, published in Architecture Australia (Jan/Feb 2001).
For current thinking on Brisbane 2032, explore our recent dossier. Read Catherin Bull's introduction here, Malcolm Middleton's article on the complicated Olympics planning process here, a roundtable on legacy pathways here, Richard Kirk's take on the history and opportunities for Woolloongabba here, Michael Keniger on the potential of design review here, and Helen Lochhead's comparison of lessons from Sydney 2000 and London 2012 here. Tickets are also now on sale for The Architecture Symposium: All eyes on Brisbane, a Design Speaks program organised by Architecture Media, which will be held on 17 October 2025.
