The multi billion-dollar mixed use redevelopment master plan of News Corp Australia’s Queensland headquarters, promises considerable growth space for media innovation in Australia.

The Millennium Square Precinct master plan will deliver the vision for Australia’s first ‘media-opolis’; bringing together a world class workplace offering for new knowledge, media commerce and technology enterprises within a vibrant urban precinct. The four hectare Bowen Hills site proposes a collocation of residential, workplace, retail, dining, lifestyle and parkland within a rail-based transit oriented development (TOD).

The revamped News Queensland media offices will be transformed into a thriving inner city precinct, working to convert development challenges into win-win city making opportunities. Archipelago provided News Corp with a bold urban design strategy that repositions incumbent land holdings as an exemplar urban centre.

Working within an existing Priority Development Area (PDA), Archipelago were able to use their experience with the PDA planning instrument and working relationships with Economic Development Queensland to make a series of propositions to inform how the PDA might be redrafted for better urban outcomes.

By taking a design driven approach, seeking to solve inherent challenges written into the existing PDA structure plan, Archipelago’s reworked proposal for Millennium Square was able to take News Corp’s landlocked and marginalised address and propose a structure plan that added significant value to both incumbent government land holdings and News Corp properties.

Archipelago’s success in the reworking of the Bowen Hills PDA speaks to the firms questioning aesthetic, one in which no constraint is sacrosanct, and true innovation comes from asking the difficult questions. The city making experts bring a perpetual desire to understand cities. Their design led, pragmatic approach to shaping the fabric of the city, engages with the regulatory environment to negotiate an enhanced urban position for all.