BE in Review
2025/26
Message from the Head of School
As we move into 2026, BE in Review looks back at the year that has been, celebrating the many achievements of our researchers, teachers and students across the past 12 months – covering Architecture, Construction, Design, Planning, Property and more.
2025 was a wonderful year for the School, for so many reasons. In March, we saw UNSW jump to 23rd in the world, and 2nd in Australia, in the 2025 QS Rankings for Architecture & Built Environment. Later, the Australian Financial Review named us Australia’s leading research institute in the field of architecture for the fifth year running. Across 2025 we also received $7.3m of grant funding to expand our research in smart, sustainable and equitable design and cities.
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But beyond these numbers, I’m most proud of the impact our staff and students are having, both here in Australia and internationally, tackling some of the greatest challenges we face across the built environment.
2025 saw our City Futures Research Centre open the Housing Analytics Lab in Sydney’s Tech Central, providing access to centralised housing data and analysis tools from different sectors that will be used by government and policy makers to tackle our housing crisis.
We also expanded our commitment to tackling the built environment’s role in climate change, with our researchers teaming up with the World Bank to deliver urban cooling training in Tanzania, while we received new grants to realise the environmental retrofit of apartment buildings, prototype innovative residential energy management systems and establish a new Australian Smart Environmental Observatory.
Our researchers also continued developing innovative tools and infrastructure to improve safety and sustainability in our cities and regions. This includes new projects using AI to better predict bushfire spread for emergency responders, and installing 3D-printed reef structures in Sydney’s harbour to reestablish dwindling oyster populations.
2025 has also been a great year for our students and alumni, with six of our recent graduates named in Australian Design Review’s ‘30 under 30’. City Planning graduate Aaron Petersen was named Australia’s 2025 Young Planner of the Year, while UNSW students also won Design Institute of Australia, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and Good Design Australia Awards.
We wrapped up the year in style at our BE Grad Exhibition in November, taking over the remarkable setting of Sydney’s White Bay Power Station, where 3,000 members of the community, industry, families and friends joined us to view our students’ work and celebrate our graduating cohorts’ many achievements.
All of this, and more, is captured in this edition of BE in Review. I do hope you enjoy the stories, videos and links within.
Prof. Philip Oldfield
Head of School, UNSW Built Environment
