The Sydney Arcade was constructed in 1998. The sketches shown here, were drawn when I was a young, fresh, university graduate and illustrate my first experience at Computer Aided Design – Microstation! In those days, photo-montages were not created with Photoshop, but with paper, glue and scissors and we rendered with……..pencils and markers.

The original Sydney Arcade (c.1881) was the first arcade in Sydney. Part of our design brief, was to restore and integrate the King Street facade into the new retail street. The arcade is a curved laneway, 6 metres wide, 4 storeys high and covered by a curved glass vaulted roof. The highly detailed shop fronts for this ‘fashion street’ are treated similarly to the street facades, combining sandstone cladding, metal balconies, signage and lighting. The glazed canopy provides a sense of enclosure to the internal street, allowing open balconies to promote vertical activity. One of the features of the laneway are, two storey high bay windows that can be used as visual display shopfronts.