NINELINE receives Gold at the Australian Good Design Awards

Designed by architects, for architects, NINELINE has received Gold at the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards, recognising an architectural idea transformed into an innovative Australian-manufactured building product.

Developed by Studio Nine Architects in collaboration with Stratco Australia, NINELINE was awarded Gold in the Product Design, Hardware and Building category, recognising an innovative approach to steel cladding that expands the possibilities for architectural expression.

NINELINE began with a challenge encountered through architectural practice. While designing a community sports and recreation project, the design team was unable to find a steel cladding solution capable of achieving the depth, shadow, and articulation the architecture called for. Existing profiles offered limited variation, while more expressive outcomes typically relied on complex, multi-material or bespoke facade systems.

Rather than design around these limitations, the team began exploring how the product itself could be reimagined.

For Studio Nine Architects Managing Director Andrew Steele, the challenge presented an opportunity to rethink the materials and systems available within the design industry.

"As architects, we're constantly looking for ways to achieve more through the materials and systems available to us. With NINELINE, we reached a point where the existing products couldn't deliver what we were trying to achieve. Rather than compromise the design, we saw an opportunity to rethink the product itself and create something that could benefit other architects facing the same challenges," says Andrew.

That exploration became the starting point for NINELINE, conceived by Studio Nine Architects and developed collaboratively with Stratco Australia. Drawing on years of experience designing and specifying building products, the studio set out to create a new architectural cladding solution that responded directly to the challenges encountered in practice.

Working closely with Stratco, the architectural idea evolved through prototyping, testing, and refinement into a family of deep-set steel profiles capable of creating pronounced depth, rhythm and shadow through a single pre-finished material.

The collaboration brought together Studio Nine Architects' understanding of facade design and the limitations architects encounter in practice, with Stratco's expertise in engineering, manufacturing and material performance. Together, the teams refined the profile geometry, structural performance, detailing and manufacturing processes to translate the original design intent into a practical, commercially viable product.

The resulting profiles reach depths of up to 144 millimetres, compared with typical steel cladding profiles of between 25 and 55 millimetres. This increased depth creates pronounced shadow lines and sculptural facade articulation, while providing opportunities to integrate building services within the depth of the system.

Lightweight and pre-finished, NINELINE is designed to work with standard sub-framing and conventional construction methods, reducing the complexity typically associated with highly articulated facade systems.

For Studio Nine Architects, the Gold recognition marks an important milestone in a journey that began with a single architectural challenge. Now a nationally available, Australian-manufactured product, NINELINE demonstrates how the knowledge and experience gained through architectural practice can extend beyond individual buildings, challenging conventional approaches to material design and creating new possibilities for the wider industry.