This is particularly relevant in the case of Victoria Barracks in Paddington, a place approaching 200 years of continuous evolution. Its significance is not just in its heritage fabric, but in the way it has adapted over time while retaining a strong civic and institutional identity. As it looks toward a new chapter, it presents a rare opportunity not to “complete” the site in a single move, but to establish a framework that allows it to continue evolving.

The challenge is not simply what to build next, but how to set the conditions for the next 50 or 100 years, ensuring that change adds to the place rather than diminishes it.

We often look to great European cities as benchmarks for placemaking, forgetting that what we admire is not just design quality, but the result of layers of change over decades, sometimes even centuries. Squares evolve, edges soften, uses shift, and identity is gradually reinforced.

By contrast, contemporary projects are expected to resolve everything upfront heritage, density, public life, commercial return into a single, immediate outcome. The question is whether that expectation is even realistic without the benefit of time.

Early design becomes a way of testing scenarios, setting structure, and defining what must endure versus what can adapt. Rather than forcing premature certainty, it helps create a framework that can absorb change. In that sense, design is less about locking in an end state, and more about making a place resilient to time.

Placemaking, then, is not a finished composition but a starting logic. It asks how a place will grow into itself how public life might emerge, how movement patterns can adapt, how heritage and new uses can build on each other rather than compete. These are strategic decisions that acknowledge time as a critical ingredient, not an inconvenience. Without that perspective, there is a risk that places feel over-determined at day one but lack the capacity to mature into something richer.

Successful precincts are built on a strong organising idea that can guide change as it happens. The architect’s role is increasingly to help define that idea: not as a fixed answer, but as a durable framework that allows a place to evolve, adapt and improve long after the first phase is complete.

By Angelo Di Marco
Principal - Cottee Parker Architects