Metro North West is in the running for the Dezeen Architecture - Infrastructure Award.

Our line-wide art project, Light Line Social Square, in collaboration with artist Peter McGregor, (McGregor Westlake Architecture) and Hassell, is integrated into the architecture, landscapes and public plazas of the eight new stations.

Sydney Park Water Re-use Project took out the top award in the Architecture and Water category in this year’s Architizer A+Awards. We are very proud to have been part of this exceptional project and design team. Our environmental artwork ‘Water Falls’ is integrated into the landscape and functional design of the project. Congratulations to the City of Sydney for their vision and commitment, and to Turf Design Studio and Environmental Partnership for their inspired leadership.

We are honoured to have received the Lloyd Rees Award for Urban Design for Metro North West with Hassell and McGregor Westlake Architecture. The line-wide art project, Light Line Social Square, is integrated into the architecture, landscapes and public plazas of the eight new stations.

‘Metro North West is a richly interwoven project that integrates the public realm, infrastructure, and a sustainable vision for future density through art, landscape, and architecture across many scales. This is a series of eight projects, operating both together at the metropolitan scale of Sydney through a unified kit of parts, and independently, connected to each place through art and landscape, grounding each project in history and giving meaningful identity to place.

The orchards that historically populated the North West are reinterpreted through colour, and layout, with colours referencing their diverse produce. A gradient of colour becomes the journey along the 31km corridor through the North West. The grid of the orchards sets the organising principle of the public domain and allows detail and variation within its logical order.

At the centre of each project is a generosity of public space, the large light filled public rooms of the concourse levels and canopies are visually transparent and look out to a varied typology of public open spaces, plazas, linear street edges and parkland groves.

This is a project that looks forward to how Sydney could be, making space for people and for the public life of each community.’

Jury Citation, NSW Architecture Awards, Australian Institute of Architects.

We are honoured to have received a Commendation for Public Architecture in the Australian Institute of Architects’ NSW Architecture Awards for Metro North West with Hassell and McGregor Westlake Architecture. The line-wide art project, Light Line Social Square, is integrated into the architecture, landscapes and public plazas of the eight new stations.

In early 2020, Studio TCS will become Turpin Crawford Studio.

Studio TCS has delivered a broad range of public art and strategic projects over the last 18 months. 

We have worked with Local Governments, the Department of Planning, Sydney Metro and a number of design firms on a range of highly successful strategic projects and design competitions. We delivered projects including the Create Georges River Cultural Strategy, a Public Art Strategy for a new waterfront park in Gosford, and an Arts & Culture Study for Randwick City Council. We were also art and cultural strategists for the Fosters and Design Inc team for the Western Sydney Airport Design competition. We continue our art advisory role to Sydney Metro for the Public Art Program for the City and South West.

As part of our ongoing relationship with Sydney Institute of Marine Science, UNSW, Sydney and University of Sydney, we have delivered a temporary art work for the Ocean Lovers Festival in Bondi and short film in collaboration with digital design studio Lightwell, “Operation Crayweed with Balgowlah North Public School.”

We are extremely proud of the work we have produced together and artists Michaelie Crawford and Jennifer Turpin will continue their association with curator and strategist Christiane Statham and look forward to working in collaboration on future projects.

OPERATION CRAYWEED  WITH BALGOWLAH NORTH PUBLIC SCHOOL

An animated film by Turpin + Crawford Studio + Lightwell Studio

A creative collaboration between artists, scientists and primary school children 

Artists Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford from Turpin Crawford Studio with Curator Christiane Statham, film-makers from Lightwell Studio, and musician Ben Fink have worked with Year 4 students from Balgowlah North Public School to make this animated film about ‘Operation Crayweed’.

‘Operation Crayweed’ is an environmental rehabilitation project that is restoring crayweed, an important species of seaweed, along Sydney’s coastline from Cronulla to Palm Beach and is led by marine scientists from the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS), The University of NSW, Sydney, and The University of Sydney. 

The latest planting site in 2019 is in Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve in Manly.

The Balgowlah North students first learnt about Operation Crayweed on excursions to the Long Reef rock platform and the SIMS Marine Lab in Chowder Bay.

The students then explored that scientific knowledge through the creative process of drawing, song-writing, singing, and dancing in the making of the animated film.

This short film is the latest in a series of art/science collaborations between Turpin Crawford Studio and SIMS/UNSW/USyd. The film engages young people to become ambassadors for marine health in general, and the importance of crayweed restoration for Sydney. 

This project was supported by the John T Reid Foundation.

The film was launched by Zali Steggall OAM, Independent member for Warringah, on Sunday 24^th November 2019 at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum.

Turpin Crawford Studio is excited to be partnering with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS), Operation Crayweed and the Dorset-Sutton Initiative to present a Festival of Seaweed in Manly for funding under the My Community Project program.

The Seaweed Festival will take place in early September 2020, and will be an opportunity to celebrate our remarkable coastal ecosystems through food, art and science, and to hear about how the underwater forests are being reforested along 70 km of Sydney’s coastline - including at Cabbage Tree Bay in Manly.

The festival will include a major art installation, hands-on marine restoration of lost crayweed forests, films, art workshops and cooking demonstrations. A seaweed-inspired temporary sculptural pavilion at Shelly Beach will host a range of activities and talks.

Turpin Crawford Studio are currently undertaking an Arts and Culture Study for Randwick City LGA.

Part of the development of this Study is community consultation via an online survey.  The survey has now been released and we would like to receive as many diverse responses as possible - both from those who reside in the LGA and those who live elsewhere but who visit the Randwick City LGA for study, leisure or work.

We strongly believe that climate change is the most pressing issue facing our planet, our children and all living creatures, and we will be closing our studio to join the global climate strike in Sydney on Friday 20 September.

It's not too late to come together and demand that our politicians take action and make positive changes for the future. 

We hope to see you there!

The Create Georges River Cultural Strategy that we have worked on over the past year, in collaboration with the Georges River Council and the wonderful people of the Georges River LGA, is now on public exhibition and open for feedback for the month of July.

The next iteration of the Operation Crayweed Art Project is well underway.

We've been working with Year 4 students from Balgowlah North Public School on this stage of the project.  Students have completed a science research excursion to Long Reef, learning about marine biodiversity, crayweed and habitat restoration, and have also created some amazing drawings during art workshops at their school.  These artworks will feature in a forthcoming short film we are creating with the experts at Lightwell Studio.  

Stay tuned!

Jennifer Turpin was recently one of the judges of the Ravenswood Art Prize, Australia's most valuable women's art prize.

Flaunting it: The 2019 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize - Art Monthly

Congratulations to the winning artists - Joanna Braithwaite in the Professional category and Chris Casali in the Emerging category - and to all the selected artists!

Jenny will also be one of the judges of the 2020 Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture.

The Sydney Institute of Marine Science has released a short film about the 2019 Ocean Lovers Festival, which features the work of Turpin Crawford Studio and an appearance by Jenny Turpin.

The film is here.

Thanks to all involved!

An image of a giant crayweed plant was seen last weekend (12-14 April) at the bottom of the Bondi Icebergs Pool for the Ocean Lovers Festival.

Turpin Crawford Studio worked with SIMS (Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences) to help showcase their two marine restoration projects, Operation Crayweed and Living Seawalls.

Ocean Lovers Festival is a showcase of solutions to ocean recovery, cool products, projects and ideas for everyone and everyday living as an Ocean Lover. Conservation was the driving theme – showcasing global alliances as well as local best practice.  Speakers and participants included Kerryn Phelps and Valerie Taylor, pictured below in the centre, with Jennifer Turpin of Turpin Crawford Studio at the far right.

We're pleased to have our work, Halo, featured in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, alongside examples of excellent environmental design.

In other news, we recently had the privilege of working on the early stages of strategic public art planning for the Gosford Leagues Club Field transformation.  We worked closely with Turf Design, the Darkingjung Aboriginal Land Council and the project team to contribute to the planning of a nature-inspired space with water play and sensory experiences for all ages, with Indigenous culture embedded throughout the park.

More info here.

Our collaborative work at Sydney Park Water Reuse Project was recently featured on Channel 10's Australia by Design: Innovations.

Please click here to view our excerpt.

Also this year, Jennifer Turpin gave the 2018 Tom Bass Memorial Address, which can be found here.

Seasons Greetings from the Turpin Crawford Studio Team!  We reopen on Monday 14 January 2019.

Michaelie Crawford was an invited speaker at NAVA's Public Art Roundtable in November.  Michaelie's presentation focused on the need for better training and education options for artists and curators wishing to work in the public domain.

A diverse group of artists, industry leaders, architects, developers, consultants, agents and government colleagues at all levels participated in the three-hour workshop, which informs NAVA’s revision of the Code of Practice for the Professional Australian Visual Arts, Craft and Design Sector. This is the first of a series of consultations to be held across Australia, with the second in Melbourne next week on Monday 19 November.

Turpin Crawford Studio welcomes these discussions and looks forward to working closely with colleagues and with NAVA to contribute to the forthcoming updated Code of Practice.

NAVA's press release can be found here.

The 2018 Tom Bass Memorial Address will be given by Jennifer Turpin on the 31 October, at 7pm in the Centenary Auditorium at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Jenny studied with Tom Bass in the 1980s and will present her work, and the work she has produced together with Michaelie Crawford over the past 20 years, in a presentation titled 'Collaborations with Nature'.  

No bookings are required. 

In advance of this talk, Jenny gave an interview to the ABC, which can be found at this link.

We're excited to announce that the Sydney Park Stormwater Reuse Project has been awarded another prestigious prize - this time the International Architecture Award for Parks, 2018.  More details are here - International Architecture Awards 2018.

Congratulations to all of our collaborators -  Turf Design Studio, Environmental Partnership, Alluvium and Dragonfly Environmental - and many thanks to the City of Sydney.

A number of Turpin Crawford Studio projects have been included on the Government Architects Office website, including Restoring the Waters case study and the Sydney Park Water Reuse Project case study.

These case studies, among others, support the release of the first state-wide green infrastructure policy drafted for NSW, the Greener Places report, authored by the Government Architect NSW. This policy argues that green spaces should be understood, developed and managed as a networked piece of infrastructure, rather than as a collection of discrete objects.

For more information, please click Greener Places policy and Green Infrastructure policy.

Turpin + Crawford Studio collaborated with Turf Design Studio, Environmental Partnership, Alluvium and Dragonfly Environmental, on the Sydney Park Water Re-use Project. The project has been awarded Europe's oldest award for the built environment, the Civic Trust Awards, which aim to "encourage the very best architecture in the built environment" and to "reward projects that offer a positive cultural, social, economic or environmental benefit to their local communities".  

The Civic Trust Awards aim to “encourage the very best architecture in the built environment” and to “reward projects that offer a positive cultural, social, economic or environmental benefit to their local communities.”

The project won both a Civic Trust Award and one of three special awards – the Special Award for Sustainability, which recognizes a “project that demonstrates excellent sustainability credentials in terms of overall design parameters, material selection, construction methods and long term energy consumption.”

Please click here for more details.

The project is among 60 projects shortlisted from 234 submissions, of which only 11 were submitted from outside the United Kingdom.

Turpin + Crawford Studio's work for this project, Water Falls, is an integrated sculpture built from terracotta troughs that respond to the site's history and act as a functional component of the stormwater filtration system, carrying water and creating habitat for wildlife.

Last year’s Operation Crayweed Art-Work-Site, an art-science collaboration for Sculpture by the Sea, aimed to ‘reverse local extinction’ and bring Crayweed underwater seaweed forests back to Bondi, where they once flourished.

Despite a severe storm that damaged the Crayweed planted on the southern side of the bay, the scientists didn’t give up. They repeated the restoration in the less exposed northern side of the bay and this second restoration has been successful - the adult Crayweeds have reproduced and there are now dozens of ‘Craybies’ growing on the rocks surrounding the transplant mats. We hope these will be the first generation of a self-sustaining new population of Crayweed that will continue to expand.

The Bondi restoration is being followed up with other underwater reforestation efforts elsewhere in Sydney, including new forests being planted in South Head, Coogee and Maroubra in the south and Whale Beach, Warriewood and Freshwater in the north.

Operation Crayweed Art-Work-Site was part of Sculpture by the Sea 2016. The art project played an important role in bringing this environmental marine restoration to the attention of all the visitors along the coastal work.

Artists Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford involved hundreds of local school children in the project making wearable artwork, paraded along the coastal walk where their 500 metre long vibrant yellow land artwork marked the underwater rehabilitation worksite.

Operation Crayweed Art Work Site is an ongoing collaboration between the artists and Marine Ecologist Dr Adriana Verges and the Operation Crayweed team from UNSW and SIMS (Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences). It is a creative environmental project of renewal bringing together art, science and the community.

From 22 June 22 to 2 July 2017, a new iteration of the work Nomanslanding was presented in Glasgow, at the Tramway, as part of the 2017 Refugee Festival Scotland.

The work is an international co-commission between Glasgow Life and the Merchant City Festival, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and Urbane Kunst Ruhr in Germany, and brings together five artists from three countries (including Jennifer Turpin, Nigel Helyer AKA Dr Sonique, Robyn Backen, Graham Eatough and Andre Dekker). Nomanslanding was originally presented in Darling Harbour in Sydney and in Duisborg Ruhrort in Germany in 2015.

The latest iteration of the work was a huge success in Scotland, and following are some of the reviews:

International collaboration brings together five artists from three countries to fuse a multitude of disciplines

Review: Nomanslanding at Tramway, Glasgow

Theatre Reviews: Nomanslanding

On 6 May 2017, the East Sydney Community and Arts Centre in Darlinghurst (formerly known as Heffron Hall) was opened by the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. Our work, S(w)ing, is activated by children playing on the lower level of the centre, who set the artwork in motion by pulling on coloured ropes. S(w)ing is an artwork at play, a joyous choreography of colour, light and movement.

The East Sydney Community and Arts Centre is a multipurpose space that features spaces for rehearsals, creative use and community hire.

Congratulations also to Lahznimmo Architects and Spackman Mossop Michaels Landscape Architects!

Lahznimmo dresses 1960s East Sydney community centre in a 'veil of glass and aluminium'

City of Sydney page on East Sydney Community and Arts Centre

Jennifer was awarded a Churchill Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. In 2016, she travelled to Japan, Iceland, Denmark and Italy to study environmental artworks, and cultural uses of water, both contemporary and traditional.

The November edition of Landscape Architecture Australia acknowledges Turpin + Crawford Studio's work, Storm Waters, at Joynton Park in Zetland, in the Significant Projects 2001-2016 section.

Operation Crayweed Art-Work-Site was a multi-faceted, environmental performative and participatory art and science project that celebrated a significant and far-reaching good news story for Sydney’s coastal marine biodiversity.

An ‘art-work-site’ was established along Sydney’s Bondi to Bronte walk as part of the 2016 edition of Sculpture by the Sea. It physically and conceptually highlighted the otherwise invisible underwater crayweed reforestation project ‘Operation Crayweed’ being carried out along the Sydney coast including in the bay between Marks Park and the South Bondi Headland.

The project was a collaboration between artists Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford of Turpin + Crawford Studio and marine scientists from the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and UNSW.

Some videos are now online, courtesy of Sculpture by the Sea:

Darling Harbour, Sydney 1st April - 31st May 2015

Ruhrtriennale/Urbane Kunste Ruhr, Germany 14th August 2015

Glasgow, Merchant City Festival, 2016

Created by five international artists (Robyn Backen, Andre Dekker, Graham Eatough, Nigel Helyer and Jennifer Turpin) and initiated by Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Nomanslanding premiered in Darling Harbour, Sydney this April, is now showing at the Ruhrtrienniale in Germany and will next year travel to the Merchant City Festival at the Tramway in Glasgow.

No Man’s Land refers to the impasse, the place no one dares traverse, the gap of fear and uncertainty between two sides of tentative safety – a memory, a metaphor inherited from the impossible stand-off of World War I trench warfare. How can this empty space, this vacuum of devastation be poetically reimagined?

Traverse the pontoon bridges and step into a surround-sound installation and performance while floating in the middle of the water. There you will be taken on a poetic journey of a soldier’s experience during wartime: confrontation and conflict, hope and redemption. Time slows and life speeds past.

Our breath floats on the water

A murmur joins your own

A prayer within the darkness

A crossing faithfully done

We are proud to announce that the Sydney Park Water Re-Use Project, of which our work Water Falls is part, has been announced a winner of the 2016 American Architecture Prize, in the category of Landscape Architecture.

More details of the prize and other winners can be found here.

A wonderful article about this work, written by Ricky Ricardo, was also published in May. 

14 New, Must See Public Artworks Across the Globe - Huffington Post