The Multicultural Embassy_Thesis Portfolio

In cities like Sydney, where migration continuously reshapes the social and cultural landscape, architecture holds the power to question how we define belonging. The city’s public spaces—its squares, thresholds, and meeting points—are silent witnesses to layered histories of displacement, settlement, and coexistence. Beneath the visible diversity of modern Sydney, boundaries remain: colonial traces, cultural hierarchies, and invisible lines that dictate who feels seen and who remains on the periphery.

This research explores these tensions through the lens of Migration, Boundaries, and Belonging, seeking an architectural response that transforms civic space into a ground for empathy and encounter. Rooted in the philosophies of Richard Sennett, it interprets belonging as an evolving dialogue rather than a fixed identity—something continually negotiated through shared experiences of space.

The design proposal, reimagines St Mary’s Cathedral Square as a civic platform for cultural exchange and recognition. Through its modular timber structures, circular spatial arrangement, and programmatic openness, the project fosters dialogue between difference and commonality. Drawing inspiration from works such as Minsuk Cho’s Serpentine Pavilion 2024 and Shigeru Ban’s Naked House, it embodies an architecture that is adaptable, inclusive, and deeply human. Timber, chosen for its tactile warmth and sustainable properties, becomes both a material and metaphor for coexistence—flexible, grounded, and regenerative.

Therefore, the thesis proposes an architecture of thresholds—spaces that resist closure and invite participation. In doing so, it envisions a future Sydney that does not simply accommodate diversity but celebrates it; where civic architecture acts as a mediator of belonging, and where the act of gathering becomes an expression of shared humanity.