CONTEXT wins 2026 AILA NSW Landscape Architecture Award for Infrastructure

The M12 Motorway has received a Landscape Architecture Award for Infrastructure at the 2026 AILA NSW Landscape Architecture Awards. Delivered for Transport for NSW, the project brought together Hassell, GHD Design, CM+ Conybeare Morrison, CONTEXT, Balarinji and Studio Colin Polwarth across a major piece of Western Sydney infrastructure. The award recognises the importance of landscape architecture within large-scale infrastructure, where movement, ecology, Country, public realm and long-term landscape outcomes need to work together. For CONTEXT, the project demonstrates how landscape thinking can contribute at infrastructure scale, helping shape corridors that respond to place while delivering enduring environmental and community outcomes.

Congratulations to Transport for NSW, our collaborators and the many project teams involved in delivering the M12 Motorway. It was a privilege to see the project recognised alongside such a strong field of landscape architecture projects from across NSW.

Award Citation

“The M12 Motorway deftly integrates landform, planting and water systems across a Western Sydney corridor shaped by Cumberland Plain geography, on Dharug Country. The jury commends the depth of cultural collaboration, with ten First Nations knowledge holders and artists embedding the Dharug Emu (Mariong) creation story through the Great Emu in the Sky landmark, overbridge artwork and eucalypt-leaf canopy installations reflecting the Six Seasons. Delivered across three contract packages under a single Urban Design Framework, the corridor demonstrates infrastructure conceived and delivered as one coherent landscape system. “