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Sydney Olympic Park 2050 Master Plan

with SJB

Sydney Olympic Park is a prime waterfront precinct of 640 hectares, enriched by significant natural assets. Yet remediated land, limited public transport access, flood risk and urban heat exposure meant the precinct had not realised its full potential. Master Plan 2050 sets a clear direction to shift from an events precinct to a connected, everyday suburb, enabled by Sydney Metro West and future light rail. The task for Atelier Ten was to embed a practical sustainability framework that can guide staged development, with the population set to grow from 5,860 to 30,000 residents by 2050.
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Atelier Ten led the Sustainability Strategy and the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan. We worked from first principles to knit performance aspirations into statutory controls and delivery tools. Our work aligned the Master Plan to Green Star Communities, mapped measurable targets, and translated them into development controls and implementation guidance. The approach combined precinct scale resource modelling for energy, water, waste and emissions with risk-based climate assessments to set practical, staged pathways that future projects can adopt without losing sight of whole of precinct outcomes.

The Master Plan team included planners, designers, engineers, economists and Country practitioners, with the vision framed as Sydney’s Beating Green Heart. Our role was to hold the sustainability thread through partner workshops and governance forums, test ideas with modelling, and convert preferred concepts into adoptable provisions that fit agency processes, market delivery and community expectations.

Key sustainability outcomes:
• Carbon and energy: A pathway to an all-electric, renewables led precinct, including a local microgrid that can disconnect from the main grid and keep power on using on site solar and batteries. This keeps essential services and events running during outages, lowers peak demand and creates a practical route from net zero operations toward carbon positive performance.
• Circular systems: A circular economy hub supported by an underground vacuum waste network and a biorefinery for organics. The benefits include fewer truck movements, higher recovery rates, local markets for materials and lower lifecycle costs, while freeing floor area in buildings now and in the future.
• Blue-green performance: Nature positive streets, generous tree canopy, water sensitive urban design and wetland restoration that cool the microclimate, protect aquatic habitats and manage flooding. Setting minimum green and blue cover at precinct scale achieves ecological function and thermal comfort.
• Mobility and liveability: A car lite movement framework that prioritises walking and cycling and integrates with metro and future light rail. Schools, community facilities and everyday services are positioned to build a daily economy around an active public realm.
• Living Lab: Sydney Olympic Park will continue to host innovation hubs to attract organisations and tenants across environmental performance, transport, building technologies and testing of recycled materials.

The Master Plan establishes a framework to deliver new built environments as net zero in operation by 2030, phase out residual fossil fuel uses and shift to 100% renewable energy by 2050. Recycled or harvested water will supply all non-potable needs and the precinct will work toward zero waste to landfill. The result is a practical sustainability framework that simplifies complexity for future proponents while lifting performance across the whole precinct.