Four of Australia’s biggest rail projects. One design firm: Hassell

A major rail project is a risk decision as much as a design one. Here’s what our clients say about the value of partnering with Hassell.

Complex urban transport infrastructure asks more of a design firm than good design. It asks for the ability to hold together years of competing stakeholder demands, public scrutiny and engineering complexity.

We’ve been asked that question, in different words, on four of the most complex rail projects in Australia. Here’s what the people who actually made that call — the clients who hired us — say happened next.

METRO TUNNEL, MELBOURNE

One of the most complex urban builds in the state of Victoria’s history, Melbourne’s Metro needed more than station design from Hassell — it needed someone who could hold together a genuine co-design process across a wide, often competing set of stakeholders.

“Hassell’s work exceeded our expectations, both in leadership and in the quality of the design outcomes.”

— Alan Nargessi, Manager, Architecture, Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority. 

“They played an important role in shaping and facilitating a genuine co-design process with key stakeholders and the broader Metro Tunnel Project, which helped drive strong public outcomes and deliver a lasting impact for the community,” says Alan.

CROSS RIVER RAIL, BRISBANE

In Brisbane, the challenge was different: make a piece of underground infrastructure feel unmistakably like the city above it. Hassell’s design team drew on Brisbane’s own architectural vernacular — the perforated screens and faceted forms of the city’s famous Queenslander verandahs — and reimagined them thirty metres below the surface.

“Our architects had a vision to truly make something uniquely Queensland. What’s exciting… is this doesn’t look like any other underground tunnel in the world.” 

— Jeremy Kruger, Program Director, Cross River Rail

Each station is designed as a sequence of experiences — threshold, gallery, concourse, great hall, platform — rather than a single undifferentiated space. Underpinning that sequencing is safety research: stations that are active and well-lit feel safest, because they become self-policing.

METRO NORTH WEST, SYDNEY 

In Sydney’s north-west, Hassell has shown what place-specific thinking can achieve at scale. For Australia’s first fully automated metro line, we designed eight new stations and upgraded five more. A single family of adaptable station canopies unifies the 36-kilometre corridor, while an orchard-inspired colour palette gives each precinct its own identity. The result won the Walter Burley Griffin Award for Urban Design at the National Architecture Awards.

“This urban transit project is a game changer. By reaffirming the forgotten joy of train travel, it demonstrates that public infrastructure can be more than utilitarian.”

— Walter Burley Griffin Award jury, National Architecture Awards

SYDNEY METRO - WESTERN SYDNEY AIRPORT

West of Sydney, the brief is different again — and arguably more radical. In Bradfield, Australia’s first new city in a century, Hassell is designing a 23-kilometre metro corridor before the roads, housing and employment precincts it will eventually serve even exist, making public transport the default rather than an afterthought. 

Sydney Metro – Western Sydney Airport is the first rail infrastructure project in Australia to commit to full carbon neutrality from construction through to operation, and its 23-kilometre corridor includes the largest native ecology restoration program Sydney Metro has ever undertaken. 

“This isn’t just about constructing stations and tunnels; it’s about shaping the future of Greater Western Sydney.” 

— Paul Digby, CEO Parklife Metro Consortium

“Sydney Metro – Western Sydney Airport will serve as a catalyst for growth, supporting the region’s evolving identity while respecting its rich cultural history,” says Paul.

Four cities. Four very different problems to solve. What the governments, clients and delivery authorities behind each of these projects keep saying, in their own words, is much the same thing: the hardest part of building major public infrastructure is never really the tunnel. It’s getting everyone — engineers, communities, councils, competing agendas — to agree on what it should become.

The Metro Tunnel is a collaboration between leading international architecture design practices Hassell, WW+P Architects, and RSHP.