A sensitive response to the natural environment

Positioned in a quiet suburban pocket in Sydney’s eastern reaches, the Matraville Youth and Community Hall by Sam Crawford Architects offers far more than its modest appearance suggests. At its core, the project is a sensitive response to the natural environment, with the design shaped around a grove of 18 mature native trees – namely blackbutt, paperbark, banksia and casuarina. Rather than clearing the vegetation on site, the architects preserved 16 of these trees, which informed th