Projects

As a boutique consultancy we've been lucky to be involved in some great collaborative projects

POMO STUDIO, SUNSHINE COAST

Collaborators and Project Partners

 

Miles Main Street Revitalisation: Regional Placemaking & Urban Renewal

 
Miles Main Street Revitalisation: Regional Placemaking & Urban Renewal

Regional town centres often struggle with generic urban design that fails to resonate with local history or encourage economic “stickiness.” In the heart of the Western Downs, the town of Miles required more than a standard streetscape upgrade; it needed a strategic revitalisation that could express its unique cultural heritage while fostering a renewed sense of community pride.

Palmwoods Town Square: Community-Led Creative Placemaking

 
Palmwoods Town Square: Community-Led Creative Placemaking

Palmwoods, a historic town in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, faced a challenge common to many regional centres. Despite a rich 100-year history the town lacked a central civic heart. The designated site was an underutilised, sloping car park that offered no social or economic utility to the community. The objective was to transform this functional void into a “sticky” destination. To achieve this the new infrastructure needed to feel like an authentic extension of the town’s identity rather than a modern imposition.

Southport Broadwater Play Attraction: Delivering Place-Based Creative Play Infrastructure

 
Southport Broadwater Play Attraction: Delivering Place-Based Creative Play Infrastructure

Destination playgrounds are increasingly vital for urban activation, but they often rely on off-the-shelf equipment that lacks connection to place. For the Southport Broadwater Parklands, the City of Gold Coast required an iconic play attraction that was not only fun but deeply rooted in the ecological narrative of the Broadwater Estuary.

Cribb Street Landsborough

 
Cribb Street Landsborough

POMO was engaged to work alongside the Sunshine Coast Council in the renewal of Cribb Street - Landsborough’s main street. The project was part of a larger master planning process being run by council.
Specifically we participated in the community engagement process to help ascertain community attitudes and expectations around the revitalisation project.

108 Wickham Street: Delivering Strategic Creative Placemaking in Fortitude Valley

 
108 Wickham Street: Delivering Strategic Creative Placemaking in Fortitude Valley

Fortitude Valley is one of Brisbane’s most dynamic commercial precincts, yet the public realm between 100 and 108 Wickham Street had become a fragmented and underutilised thoroughfare. The asset owners required a repositioning strategy to transform this void into a high-value “third space” for tenants and the public.

Mackay Place Strategy: From Vision to Activation

 
Mackay Place Strategy: From Vision to Activation

Mackay’s City Centre and Waterfront were facing a common regional challenge: despite significant investment in infrastructure, the public realm lacked the “stickiness” required to drive economic activity. The opening of a nearby major shopping centre and changing consumer habits had drained life from the streets.

Sippy Downs Entrance Statement: Creating Place-Led Infrastructure

 
Sippy Downs Entrance Statement: Creating Place-Led Infrastructure

Sippy Downs serves as the gateway to the Sunshine Coast’s primary knowledge precinct, housing the University of the Sunshine Coast and various schools. The challenge was to define this precinct through a compelling entry statement situated at a major intersection upgrade. The project required a design that not only marked a physical threshold but also articulated the area’s identity as a hub of education and biodiversity.

Nambour CBD Creative Renewal: Activating the Night-Time Economy

 
Nambour CBD Creative Renewal: Activating the Night-Time Economy

For regional centres like Nambour, the “night-time economy” is often hampered by poor lighting and a perception of disjointed safety. The town required a strategic intervention to shift the public realm from a transit corridor into a destination that felt safe, vibrant, and welcoming after dark.

Dura Gunga: Delivering First Nations Cultural Art as Public Infrastructure

 
Dura Gunga: Delivering First Nations Cultural Art as Public Infrastructure

Integrating authentic First Nations narratives into civic infrastructure requires more than just artistic vision; it demands a rigorous delivery framework that respects cultural protocols while meeting public safety standards. For the entrance to the new City Hall in Maroochydore, the Sunshine Coast Council required a landmark piece that would permanently embed the Gubi Gubi story into the built environment.

Nambour Community Revitalisation: The 100% Bottom-Up Model

 
Nambour Community Revitalisation: The 100% Bottom-Up Model

Nambour was suffering from a distinct form of regional fatigue: a perception of “too much talk, not enough action.” Despite multiple government-funded planning initiatives, the town remained in economic decline, plagued by high business turnover and social dislocation.

C-Square Nambour

 
C-Square Nambour

Wayfinding is the process of finding one’s way through an unfamiliar environment; signage is one part of a wayfinding strategy, the part that most of us rely upon. In this project, POMO was engaged to create a comprehensive wayfinding strategy for what was arguably the Sunshine Coast’s most difficult to navigate urban precinct.

The owners of the precinct identified wayfinding as a very real need that, is addressed properly, could help improve people’s experience of the space and play a key role in creating of a more vibrant urban centre.

High Street Armadale Melbourne

 
High Street Armadale Melbourne

POMO worked with local Melbourne contractors and suppliers in Queensland to build and install the final outcomes in the street.

Maroochydore City Centre

 
Maroochydore City Centre

This project involved the detailed design and construction of smart city digital concrete signs for the new Maroochydore City Centre. These signs hold large format digital touch screens which advertise community events and wayfinding information for the new Maroochydore town centre.

The signs are currently in operation at the new Maroochy Town Centre.

Winter Street Malvern Melbourne

 
Winter Street Malvern Melbourne

This early work set the foundation for a design development process where POMO developed a place-driven community minded response for the park that catered to the different user groups in a practical and spatial way.

POMO Bush Studio

 
POMO Bush Studio

When we set out to design our studio we approached it like any design project, we began by identifying the priorities and creating a strategic framework to guide the decision making.

The initial priority was to create something simple to build, something sustainable, creatively inspiring and something that was cost effective. Through research it became clear that achieving these things was not necessarily difficult.

Mission Beach CBD Revitalisation

 
Mission Beach CBD Revitalisation

This project is underway in mid 2025 and will completely change the public realm of the entire oceanfront area of Mission Beach in North Queensland.

Dandenong Community Engagement

 
Dandenong Community Engagement

This project is currently underway in 2025 and is a collaboration between POMO and Fourfold Studio.

The team was engaged by the City of Greater Dandenong to run a targeted community engagement process. This engagement will result in the identification of locations, community champions and ideas for community-led interventions in various public places in the CBD.

Temporary Placemaking NSW

 
Temporary Placemaking NSW

This project involves the creation of a concept design for a temporary placemaking installation in a public space in NSW.

Montville Creative Lighting

 
Montville Creative Lighting

This project involved the design and delivery of a series of specialist coloured lights in a public park. The park is used by community groups for a range of purposes and they had a desire to improve the night time appeal through lighting.
POMO carried out schematic and detailed design of the lighting works and integrated an existing council-sponsored upgrade with this community program for maximum efficiencies.

Gold Coast Light Rail

 
Gold Coast Light Rail

POMO worked alongside AECOM on the design of this major infrastructure project, handling the placemaking design.
The project focused on opportunities for bespoke place-driven interventions at each of the platform stations along the route.
We began with a detailed analysis of the areas through which the light rail would move and began to unlock cultural histories, local stories, imagery and assembled a report which identified key narratives and history from each area.

Dixon Reserve Creative Placemaking

 
Dixon Reserve Creative Placemaking

This project is a collaboration between POMO lead landscape architects Aspect Studios. It involves the creation of a major park in Pimpama Gold Coast.

Nundah Placemaking

 
Nundah Placemaking

This project was commissioned by the Brisbane City Council and involved creative programming of a community engagement event. The event was designed as an opportunity for the local community to have their say on proposed designs for a public space upgrade. The space was situated in front of a group of shops and a cafe and currently being used for car parking. This was a classic case of pirioritisation of motor vehicles over people and council had prepared a urban design response to reclaim the space for community use.

Understanding & Applying Place Character

 
Understanding & Applying Place Character

The Sunshine Coast Urban Corridor

Its not everyday that we can lay claim to a world first but as far as we know this is the first report of its kind in the world. So what is it exactly?

Dinosaur Sculpture

 
Dinosaur Sculpture

Bringing an Australian dinosaur to life as a found object metal sculpture.

We were given the job of creating a prehistoric art piece for a project led by our good friends at Vee Design.

We researched the right species, worked out all the anatomical details then created a design for an Australovenator Wintonensis metal sculpture (a uniquely aussie dinosaur unearthed in Winton Qld).

Mooloolaba Concept Design

 
Mooloolaba Concept Design

Creative Placemaking Design for the redevelopment of Mooloolaba Foreshore

We were asked to create a series of place-driven design concepts that would tie in with the landscape design of the Mooloolaba Foreshore. These concepts took everyday objects and elements that were to appear in the revitalisation and applied a place-driven artistic lens to their design. This process occurred after a place analysis was conducted and local themes and narratives were identified for expression.

Nambour Placemaking Analysis

 
Nambour Placemaking Analysis

This report analyses the unique place context for a city wide urban renewal design process in the town of Nambour Queensland.

This document, running to 158 pages, offered the urban design team a detailed insight into the town so a revitalisation could be created in a way that was driven by Nambour’s unique qualities, represented its culture authentically and positioned it for future demographic changes.

Birtinya Library Placemaking Analysis

 
Birtinya Library Placemaking Analysis

Birtinya Library & Arts Development Space Placemaking Analysis

The purpose of this project was to inform the architectural design team of the specific culture, identity and history of the Birtinya area so a design could be generated that was deeply connected to the place.

The report also laid the foundations for a series of short term concepts for activating the currently empty land before development.

A 20 Year Vision for Downtown Nambour

 
A 20 Year Vision for Downtown Nambour

POMO spearheaded a pro-bono urban renewal project for the benefit of the local Nambour community. The project involved the creation of a sustainable plan aimed at revitalising the downtown Nambour CBD re-shaping the future of Nambour.

Nambour is expected to grow in population by 50% over the next twenty years. With this change comes immense opportunity for Nambour to revitalise and recreate itself as a sustainable and unique Sunshine Coast community. This change must be managed carefully in order to retain the unique character of the township as well as accommodate the changing demographic and land use patterns that will invariably occur.

State Library of Queensland

 
State Library of Queensland

Marking 100 years since the First World War, the State Library was tasked with putting on an important exhibition that told the personal stories of Queenslanders’ involvement in the First World War. POMO was asked to assist in the design of this important event.

USC & Sunshine Coast Council Co-lab Studio

 
USC & Sunshine Coast Council Co-lab Studio

In early 2019 the Sunshine Coast Council funded a cutting edge experimental design studio which was run as a capstone industry based subject for students at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Students were given the chance to work collaboratively with industry professionals to design something that would be built in a public place.

Downtown Nambour Public Art

 
Downtown Nambour Public Art

Public art has an important role to play in placemaking projects, helping to establish a sense of place and an identity for urban environments.

This project involved three installations of public art, all with different objectives. POMO played a different role within each of these projects.

Sandgate Kids

 
Sandgate Kids

The environment in which this project was undertaken was a child care centre that had been renovated and changed a number times throughout a long period of time. The centre has a number of distinct areas of care, separated into sections for children based on age plus a number of staff rooms and administration offices. This method of expansion coupled with the need to direct people to distinct areas in a confined space configuration presented a special wayfinding challenge.

Sunshine Beach Noosa

 
Sunshine Beach Noosa

Sunshine Beach is one of Queensland’s most beautiful seaside villages. It has a long history as a surfers’ coastal enclave nestled against the pristine Noosa National Park. This project aimed to upgrade a local public park using a placemaking process and gathering views through a community engagement program.