Naomi Stead

is The Saturday Paper’s architecture critic and a professor in the college of design and social context at RMIT.

By this author


Culture July 12, 2025

Taglietti Life in Design

For Enrico and Franca Taglietti, whose lives and work are memorialised in an exhibition at Canberra Museum and Gallery, Australia’s capital city was an architect’s dream.

Culture June 28, 2025

Australian House: The Robin Boyd Award

There are plenty of dodgy award programs in world architecture. Some are venal, many are vacuous – and so are the glossy coffee-table publications they engender. Australian House: The Robin Boyd Award is an exception. The Australian Institute …

Culture May 10, 2025

Bondi Junction Boot Factory

Its vaulting civic space makes Archer Office’s redevelopment of the Bondi Junction Boot Factory a building of aspiration.

Culture March 29, 2025

Retain, Repair, Reinvest

Designers are often dismissed as idealistically naive when it comes to the economic and policy levers of housing provision. But Melbourne’s OFFICE – a non-profit design and research practice – makes an important contribution with Retain, Repair, …

Culture March 22, 2025

Théo Mercier’s Mirrorscape sand sculpture at Mona

The most interesting thing about French artist Théo Mercier’s sand sculpture Mirrorscape is not its form but the process of its un-forming.

Culture February 08, 2025

The St Kilda Pier redevelopment

The redeveloped St Kilda Pier is a shining example of a structure that’s well conceived, designed and built, and brings new possibilities to a public space.

Culture December 21, 2024

Best architecture: diversity, quality and inventiveness on display

The Saturday Paper’s architecture critic looks back at the highlights of 2024.

Culture November 09, 2024

The restored Lucas Glass House

Winner of the heritage category in architecture’s Oscars, the restored Lucas Glass House is a modest structure on the very edge of the possible.

Culture September 04, 2024

Sydney Metro City line on track for greatness

The new Sydney Metro City line is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Australia – and it has moments of the sublime.

Culture July 06, 2024

Design contest entries offer fresh ideas on aged care

As the designs for the Reimagining Where We Live competition show, residential care for the elderly can encompass a lot more than warehousing people until they die.

Culture April 13, 2024

Reactivating White Bay Power Station

The Biennale of Sydney’s occupation of White Bay Power Station, a vast temple of the industrial revolution, is an inspired metamorphosis – and it’s only the beginning of the site’s possibilities.

Culture February 24, 2024

Sydney Brutalism

It’s the mark of a timely book that when you see it, you’re amazed it didn’t already exist. There is much great brutalist architecture in Sydney, but it’s scattered and easy to forget about. When you see it gathered within the covers of Sydney …

Culture February 10, 2024

Taylor and Hinds on discovering the truth of Country

For Tasmanian practice Taylor and Hinds, developing deep and long-term relationships with specific Aboriginal communities is a process of discovering the truth of Country.

Culture December 23, 2023

Best architecture: accolades flow as housing policy steps up

The Saturday Paper’s architecture critic looks back at the highlights of 2023.

Culture October 21, 2023

Spring Bay Mill

A controversial site once home to a massive woodchip operation has been transformed into a peaceful place designed for people.

Culture September 02, 2023

Nightingale Village

In their pursuit of excellent design in the name of sustainability and social good, the Nightingale developments are exemplars of architect-led contemporary architecture.

Culture July 01, 2023

Victorian Pride Centre

The designers of the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda took on a number of almost insurmountable challenges – and triumphed.

Culture May 20, 2023

Flipside Circus

Flipside Circus’s bright new Brisbane headquarters are built from shipping containers – a possible metaphor for the contingent place of the arts in Australian culture.

Culture March 25, 2023

Studio Bright’s Garden Tower House

The detailed domestic architecture of Studio Bright has lessons for making dense urban spaces greener and lighter.

Culture February 04, 2023

Sydney Modern: beauty and the beast

The Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern reflects the city – breezy and bright above, with a dark, stygian underworld.

Culture October 22, 2022

Anthony Clarke’s architecture of care

Anthony Clarke’s designs for people with complex needs create “holding spaces” where difficult feelings can take place.

Culture September 03, 2022

Sydney Opera House 2.0

The success of the Sydney Opera House refurbishment adds another layer to a complex architectural story.

Culture June 25, 2022

Fish Lane Town Square

The Brisbane development Fish Lane Town Square is a brilliant reclamation of disused urban space.

Culture May 07, 2022

MPavilion – The Lightcatcher

Melbourne’s MPavilion series focuses on the vexed question of whether architecture can be art.

Culture April 02, 2022

The Garden House

The Garden House is a radical reappraisal of architecture as environmental healing.

Culture February 05, 2022

Lust for Lifestyle

The SA State Library’s exhibition Lust for Lifestyle explores how mid-century Modernist architecture aestheticised the everyday.

Culture December 04, 2021

The quiet glamour of 52 Reservoir Street

The peacock dress of a new office building in Sydney’s Surry Hills belies its ingeniously modest design.

Culture October 30, 2021

Who made the shortlist for the National Architecture Awards?

The National Architecture Awards are a chance to reflect on the state of the art.

Culture September 18, 2021

New look for Upfield railway line

The new Upfield railway line development is a triumph, restoring parkland to space-starved citizens.

Culture August 07, 2021

Permanent Camping

The Permanent Camping pavilions demonstrate how exquisite small buildings can be – but what does this photogenic asceticism say about how we’re living now?

Culture July 03, 2021

Architect John Ellway’s green thumb

John Ellway’s striking homes play on the traditional Queenslander design, bringing the garden into the home.

Culture May 08, 2021

Australian War Memorial

The proposed redevelopment of the Australian War Memorial not only compromises Charles Bean’s original vision for a ‘simple, solemn, exquisite building’, it calls into question our processes of public governance.

Architecture March 27, 2021

ACMI redevelopment

The ACMI redevelopment brings Victoria’s major institution for screen culture into triumphant focus.

Culture February 20, 2021

Pentridge Coburg

The redevelopment of Pentridge prison raises troubling questions about how we preserve our punitive past, and whether it is ever acceptable to exploit misery as a brand.