Urban catalyst: Unveiling Sydney Fish Market’s new chapter

Once confined by industrial remnants and cut off from the waterfront it served, the market is being transformed into a vibrant civic landmark, where sustainability, inclusivity, and authenticity converge.

In this interview, Clémence Carayol from Architecture & Design sits down with 3XN Partner Fred Holt, Copenhagen-based 3XN Senior Partner Audun Opdal, and BVN Principal Catherine Skinner to discuss the design principles guiding the project, from climate resilience and innovative construction, to cultural storytelling and community engagement. 

The design team is adamant: the renewed market will honour the site’s historic identity while embracing the future.

Image: The Sydney Fish Market’s roof has recently been completed / Multiplex

Architecture & Design: What are the key architectural principles guiding the renewal of the Sydney Fish Market, and how do they reflect the site’s cultural and historical significance. 

Fred Holt: Sydney’s Harbour is the city’s defining feature: the two are indivisible. The harbour’s edge, particularly around Sydney’s centre, is dotted with landmarks that showcase its rare natural beauty and reinforces its renown around the world. 

The existing Fish Market, currently housed in a series of old warehouses and post-industrial buildings, is a bustling community and tourist destination in the city – but it has outgrown its current facilities and is walled off from the water just beside it.

Our winning competition proposal envisioned a building not just capable of handling the operational complexity of a working fish market, but that would be worthy of Sydney’s iconic waterfront. Once completed, the market will serve multiple purposes: as a working fish market, an amenity for the city, a cultural destination, an urban connector, community catalyst and an inspiring icon along the world-renowned Sydney waterfront.

The new Sydney Fish market will act as a community catalyst, bringing locals back to the market more regularly, while maintaining the authenticity of an operating fish market by allowing the operations and product movement be the backdrop for visitors. 

What measures have been taken to improve accessibility and inclusivity within the new development? 

Fred Holt: The new market improves accessibility and inclusivity by addressing one of the key challenges of the existing fish market, where tourists often disrupt industrial operations, creating conflicts with goods movement and restricting visitor access.

Our design physically separates operational areas from public spaces, while maintaining visual connections. The promenade lifts over the operations of the market below, allowing seamless public access without interfering with seafood delivery, wholesale, and processing. 

The promenade stairs, located on each face of the building, continue the landscape into the market, offering multiple entry points. These stairs undulate from ground to upper ground, leading visitors to the retail level while also serving as amphitheatre seating with views of the bay and Anzac Bridge, or the two community plazas.  These large civic gestures allow space for all visitors, whether retail patrons or not.

By maintaining a human-scaled retail floor, the new market preserves the lively atmosphere of traditional marketplaces while ensuring a more inclusive and accessible experience for all. 

Catherine Skinner: The new market enhances access to and movement along the harbour between Pyrmont and Glebe, connecting to public transport, a future ferry terminal and shared pedestrian/cycle ways. While the design incorporates a significant level change, lifts to the east, south and west ensure equitable access around the building. 

An Adult Changing Place and Parents’ room will improve the visitor experience. The Upper Ground, connected by large gently graded staircases will be accessible 24 hours, ensuring continuous public engagement with the waterfront. 

Image: The sweeping roof canopy unifies the building’s diverse functions / Multiplex

How will the redesign enhance the experience for both local visitors and international tourists while maintaining the market’s authentic character? 

Fred Holt: By extending the foreshore promenade, the new Sydney Fish Market connects Blackwattle Bay to the city’s sequence of waterfront destinations, increasing accessibility and engagement with the harbour across the city. Unlike the existing market, which is walled off from the water, the new design opens up to its surroundings, offering ample public space and direct waterfront access.

The promenade stairs, located on each face of the building, provide seamless entry while doubling as amphitheatre seating with views of the water and Anzac Bridge. 

The sweeping roof canopy, with its modular skylights sitting atop its striking timber structure, unifies the building’s diverse functions while enhancing sustainability through shading, daylighting, ventilation, and rainwater and solar energy harvesting. 

While these functional features may be invisible to the visitors’ eye, they are essential components of the experience of the new Sydney Fish Market. 

Catherine Skinner: The market’s industrial character has been retained, making the busy loading dock, wharves and auction operations visible to the public, while elevating the experience through improved sightlines, daylight penetration, and an interconnected layout that facilitates the narrative journey from harbour to plate. 
 

Pictured here: The market’s skylight roof cassette that can fit with the angles of the timber roof beams below / Sara Vita 

What innovative construction techniques or material are being utilised to ensure durability and longevity, given the waterfront location? 

Fred Holt: One of the standout design features in the new market is that of the roof, which packs a huge amount of complex considerations into its elegant, sweeping form. 

The roof shape was designed to resolve several design and construction constraints through a simple undulating surface that collects every drop of rainwater at its two low points, and a skylight roof cassette that can fit with the angles of the timber roof beams below, while providing ample amounts of daylight. Functionally, the roof takes on additional qualities (beyond that of shelter).

Rainwater collection and redirection: The curvature of the roof is primarily driven by the need to redirect rainwater. With the expression of the soffit (underside of the canopy) a key architectural focus, and one which enhances the visitor experience of the space, it was crucial to avoid visible services and downpipes, and the ability to have water directed on the surface of the roof, rather than through traditional downpipes was therefore critical. 

Through parametric modelling, the roof form was therefore conceived as a landscape to direct rainwater, ensuring all rainfall flowed into two low points, or basins, in the roof for rainwater harvesting. The rainwater is then collected, filtered and reused, reducing water consumption by 50%.

Audun Opdal: Natural daylight: With such an expansive roof surface, you run the risk of the interior space becoming very dark. Wanting to reduce energy loads and bring natural daylight into the upper ground market hall (while blocking the strong, direct sunlight that comes from the north in the southern hemisphere), the 311 of the 406 cassettes above the market hall have south facing skylights to allow an even, southern natural light.

We knew fairly early on that we would need to design a modular, three-dimensional surface that would both provide market hall canopy feel, while providing natural daylight and views to sky. We tried a few options, in the end, the pyramid modules were the best, strongest, and most beautiful option (and consequently, resembles fish scales).

Ventilation: A fish market obviously needs to be kept cool – and a space this large would require enormous amounts of energy to artificially maintain the temperature. With our push for sustainability, passive systems were designed to increase the human comfort level in the common spaces of the open air, upper ground retail floor level.

Fred Holt: To help maintain the indoor temperature, the roof again was a sensible place to look at this (as it evenly covers the whole surface, ensuring that we wouldn’t get different temperature pockets across the hall). 

The canopy sits above the program boxes below, allowing air to flow through the upper ground floor level, helping to reduce energy loads by ca. 35%. The near white roof’s external surface colour helps reflect heat away from the patrons below.

Audun Opdal: Solar energy harvesting: The large roof surface provides the perfect venue for photovoltaic panels. Panels are mounted on the western face of each of the pyramid roof cassettes.  They not only block the direct, harsh western sun, but simultaneously convert it to energy, helping to reduce the overall energy loads. 

GXN, our in-house sustainability arm, modelled the potential for this, and helped inform the design with product selections which could deliver on the design intent for a white roof.

Catherine Skinner: An innovative Japanese piling system, known as Giken, or Silent Piler, was essential to building the coffer dam – a vast bathtub in reverse – with minimal environmental disruption, to establish the work site. 

A robust materials palette, including ceramic tiles, marine-grade concrete, timber and corrosion-resistant finishes ensures durability on the waterfront. Prefabrication techniques have been employed to enhance precision and minimise on-site environmental impact. 

Given the complexity of site access, the roof materials were required to be staged off site and delivered to the project by barge, the prefabrication of roof modules was essential, not only to accelerate construction but also to manage the quality of the waterproofing, PV panels and integrated services. 

Image: The market is situated on the iconic Sydney Harbour / Sara Vita

How has the surrounding urban landscape and transport infrastructure influenced the architectural design of the renewed market? 

Fred Holt: The new Sydney Fish Market sits at the head of Blackwattle Bay with a development footprint of approximately four hectares and its roof canopy nearly two hectares. The design capitalises on the opportunity to connect the bay to the north visually with Wentworth Park to the south, and the community to the east and west with the new building as a cultural icon. 

Envisioned to be a tourist destination, the new Sydney Fish Market will facilitate interaction by combining an ample amount of public space with an authentic market. As an operating seaport and wholesale operation, it is crucial that the new facility balances the industrial and recreational functions harmoniously. 

Additionally, it goes beyond its immediate role of the sale and distribution of seafood and creates an array of varied experiences that enable change and responsiveness to the future, creating a landmark for locals and tourists alike that is an integral part of the city fabric. 

An industrial typology is typically a very introverted focus building, yet the design makes it a more extroverted offering, putting on display, the operations of a functioning fish market, and making it an active part of the urban landscape, while connecting to place; creating an authentic destination. 

Catherine Skinner: The market is positioned as an urban catalyst, establishing a civic anchor to the future Bays Precinct redevelopment. 3XN’s design incorporates multiple entry points corresponding to different transport modes—from a future ferry terminal and cycle path connections to pedestrian links and ride-share drop-offs— ensuring the market is truly accessible, while also prioritising public access to the waterfront. 

In what ways does the new design address climate resilience, particularly in relation to rising sea levels  and extreme weather events? 

Audun Opdal: The new Sydney Fish Market design addresses climate resilience by prioritising natural light and ventilation, rainwater collection and redirection and solar energy harvesting, while also incorporating a modular design for flexibility and sustainability. 

The design also aims to minimise waste and ensure efficient building processes.  (See the detailed answers regarding innovative construction techniques above.) 

Catherine Skinner: The building is elevated above projected flood levels, incorporating resilient landscaping and permeable surfaces to mitigate stormwater runoff. The modular roof structure provides passive shading while withstanding extreme weather conditions.

What role do public spaces and community engagement play in the redevelopment, and how have local stakeholders been involved in the design process? 

Fred Holt: The new Sydney Fish Market integrates into what is quintessential Sydney, the blurring of internal and external space, and a foreshore experience.

Catherine Skinner: Public engagement has been an important part of the entire process, with community workshops and stakeholder consultations, including the anchor tenant, The Sydney Fish Market, shaping key elements of the market. 

The redevelopment includes flexible public spaces, a harbourside promenade, and areas for cultural events, reinforcing the market’s role as a community hub. 

How does the new structure balance functionality for commercial vendors with aesthetic and experiential improvements for the public?

Fred Holt: In designing the new building, we were inspired by the traditional market archetype, which appears throughout history and across cultures – still a success today in its ability to amass diverse groups of people. 

Markets are social hubs for cities around the world and broadly follow the same architectural orthodoxies: a series of stalls that are open to the air but loosely grouped under a canopy and located within a large plaza. This concept is the foundation of the new building, both continuing and expanding on the existing archetype.

The existing fish market has conflicting functions. Like other fish markets across the world, tourists consider it a destination, even waking up early to visit the market auction during its peak trading hours. However, this often interrupts the daily operations of the industrial scale working market and collides with goods movement, resulting in restricted access to visitors.

Taking this aspect into consideration, the organisation of the program in the new building physically separates the operational movement from the public yet allows visual connections between the two.  

An example of this is the ‘fishbowl’ style travelator that links basement parking with the upper ground retail, yet passes through the operations floor with glazed facades, allowing visitors a peak of the behind-the-scenes operations.  Additionally, the majority of the ground level façade on Bridge Road is glazed to allow passersby opportunities to watch the spectacle of an operating fish market.  

Catherine Skinner: Stacking the Sydney Fish Market Operations over a partially sub-aquatic basement has optimised the Market’s operational footprint, creating an opportunity for a highly engaging public realm that lifts up and over the Wharves and Loading Dock. 

This enables the complimentary relationship of the public realm and Market operations that has previously in tension. The vast roof canopy form provides protection over a large, naturally lit and ventilated marketplace. 

What are the biggest architectural challenges faced during this renewal, and how have they been addressed?

Fred Holt: The new Sydney Fish Market is a project like no other. It is a hugely complex project which, given its public, civic and operational function, needed also to be simple. Its prominence in the city and in Sydneysider’s traditions meant that it needed to be a standout – but not at the cost of its functionality. 

The project has had no shortage of challenges. The roof is both custom and modular, made to fit the unique conditions of this project and site, and demonstrates the immense problem-solving capacity of great design. 

The market floor must be smooth to navigate but accommodate the needs of many different user types.  And there is the challenge of the site itself: there are few places more meaningful to build a civic building than on Sydney’s harbour. We’re honoured to have been entrusted with these challenges – and we believe the new Sydney Fish Market will stand up to the task. 

Catherine Skinner: The biggest architectural challenges have come from the utter uniqueness of the project. Satisfying the complex needs of a unique blend of stakeholder and building typologies, within an immense inner-city building seen from all directions, that is built into and over the 

Sydney Harbour has been a Herculean task for the entire project team. The 20,000sqm floor plate has almost no repetition, and as it occupies almost 90% of the site area, requires the majority of materials to be staged off site and delivered to the project by barge.

Image: New Sydney Fish Market, designed by 3XN in association with BVN / supplied