Designing for Impact

Our inaugural Designing for Impact report represents Hassell’s commitment to measuring, understanding and improving the environmental and social consequences of our work.

In a world facing unprecedented environmental and social challenges, the built environment stands at a critical crossroads. The design decisions we make today will shape the resilience of our communities for generations to come.

While we discuss our wins and challenges across our practice, we recognise the need to share our progress and how our regenerative design work adds value with our clients, collaborators, and partners. Designing for Impact responds to this need. 

“By openly sharing our successes, failures and challenges, we hope to contribute to a culture of transparency that drives collective improvement across our industry.” 

Liz Westgarth, Managing Director, Hassell

As our inaugural public impact report, this paper communicates our holistic work as designers, and how we’re walking the talk across our eight studios. Designing for Impact sets out our progress in implementing our Sustainability Framework in our projects and our practice by meticulously measuring and enhancing the environmental and social performance of our work in architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and urban design. It’s the first periodic snapshot of our impact as an international design studio.

The targets within our Sustainability Framework set out our ambition and what we will achieve, in three clear stages of evolution:

Designing for Impact focuses on our achievements during the 2025 financial year (1 July 2024 — 30 June 2025. It highlights how we’ve made a start embedding regenerative design principles in all our work and how we continue to develop our approach to design led by Country - an Australian First Nations framework that places deep connections to land, water and culture at the centre of design thinking. The report also spotlights how we have validated our purpose and our impact by becoming a Certified B Corp.

Designing for Impact provides insight into our progress across the four areas of our Sustainability Framework — Place, Carbon, Social, Systems — sharing our stories and our collective results across our portfolio.

To read more about our Sustainability Framework download the full Designing for Impact report here.

At a glance: Hassell in FY25

Total embodied carbon of our projects 

We became a B Corporation

We worked across the world on numerous projects varying in scale and type