Waterloo Station, the new Sydney Metro underground station designed by John McAslan + Partners in collaboration with Woods Bagot at the heart of the Waterloo Metro Quarter, has taken home Gold in the Transport category at the 2026 World Architecture News Awards, sharing the top honour with fellow Sydney Metro station Gadigal, designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with COX Architecture.
The double Gold result places both stations among the most internationally recognised pieces of public infrastructure built in Australia in decades and confirms the Sydney Metro City and Southwest project as one of the world’s benchmark achievements in transit-focused urban design. For Redfern and Waterloo residents, the award recognition brings renewed attention to a station that sits at the front door of one of Sydney’s most significant urban renewal corridors.
What Makes Waterloo Station Stand Out
Waterloo Station occupies an entire city block at the centre of the Waterloo Metro Quarter, a position that reflects its intended role as far more than a transit node. The station design positions people at the centre of the transport experience, creating a welcoming hub in a series of highly legible below-ground spaces naturally lit by a network of skylights and intuitive to navigate for all.
The design encompasses sandstone from Waterloo itself, with a nuanced material palette dominated by hues drawn from the surrounding area. That grounding in local materiality gives the station a genuine sense of place rather than the generic finish that large infrastructure projects often default to. Three wall-mounted sculptures at Waterloo, collectively titled “Footprints on Gadigal Nura,” were developed by Indigenous artist Nicole Monks with the continuing Custodians and Aboriginal community who have connection to the land, weaving the area’s deep history directly into the fabric of the building rather than treating cultural acknowledgement as an afterthought.
The WAN Awards judges described Waterloo as a high-quality project with a strong integration of art, clear navigation and a restrained design sensibility, a combination that reflects the deliberate design philosophy spearheaded by John McAslan + Partners and Woods Bagot from the project’s inception.
Gadigal’s Growing List of Accolades
Gadigal Station, designed by Foster + Partners in collaboration with COX Architecture, has been building a formidable international profile since the Sydney Metro City line opened in August 2024. In 2025, the station was named one of the world’s most beautiful passenger stations by the Prix Versailles awards, a global program celebrating excellence in architectural and commercial design. That same year, it was included among a select group dubbed the “Magnificent Seven” most beautiful stations worldwide. The 2026 WAN Gold award adds further international weight to a station that has quickly become one of the most discussed pieces of contemporary architecture in Australia.
Gadigal Station takes its name from sitting on Gadigal land, and its design has been widely praised for its integration of public art and acknowledgement of the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which it stands.
A Metro Line Built Around Design Excellence
The two Gold awards at the WAN are not isolated outcomes but reflections of a design ambition that ran across the entire Sydney Metro City and Southwest project from the outset. The Sydney Metro represents Australia’s largest infrastructure project, totalling $21.6 billion, and connects Sydney’s northwest, west, southwest and greater west regions through a network of fully accessible stations. Each station on the City line was assigned to an architectural practice with significant international credentials, producing a line where every station carries a distinct design identity while maintaining coherent operational legibility across the network.
The City and Southwest line runs from Chatswood to Sydenham through central Sydney and connects to the Metro North West line, which opened in 2019. Waterloo Station serves as the southern anchor of the inner-city section, connecting one of Sydney’s fastest-growing renewal precincts directly to the CBD in a journey time that fundamentally changes the accessibility of the neighbourhood.
Why This Matters to Redfern and Waterloo
For Redfern and Waterloo, a community with a complex and layered history that stretches from nineteenth-century industry through social housing, Indigenous urban community life and more recent creative and technology sector growth, a globally recognised station at the front of the neighbourhood carries significance well beyond the commuter convenience.
The station sits at the heart of the Waterloo Metro Quarter and acts as a catalyst for further regeneration, with an over-station development currently under construction marking the next phase of the comprehensive urban scheme. That development will introduce residential, retail and commercial uses directly above the station entry, extending the precinct’s transformation into the blocks surrounding the station over the coming years.
The WAN Gold award confirms what the station’s daily users have already experienced: that Waterloo Station is not simply a place to catch a train. It is a piece of architecture that takes the history, culture and identity of its neighbourhood seriously, and builds those qualities into the spaces that hundreds of thousands of people move through every week.
Further information about the Sydney Metro network is available at sydneymetro.info.
Published 27-March-2026.