SOM's 34-Storey Tower Will Crown Geelong's Historic Cunningham Pier

SOM has won the competition to turn Geelong's Cunningham Pier into a 10,000-square-metre waterfront development, capped by a 34-storey tower that will become the Australian city's tallest building.

The international architecture studio is designing the scheme for developers Gurner Group and Costa Property Group. The programme stacks public space, apartments, a 200-room hotel, shops and restaurants over the water at Corio Bay in Victoria.

The tower at the pier's end will surpass the 21-storey Miramar apartment tower to claim the height record for Geelong. Trefoil in plan, its form resembles three combined cylinders that taper towards the top and bottom.

What happens to the 1855 pier?

The project will transform and extend the existing structure, which was originally built in 1855 to give railway access to docking ships. It underwent major refurbishment in 1929. Today it serves as a stretch of car parking spaces culminating in a restaurant and event space.

SOM's vision is a pedestrianised waterfront destination. Visitors will enter through a public square with water features. A series of buildings with rounded edges and layered terraces will line the pier's length, a form language the studio designed to reference the movement of water and marine forms.

"An elevated public promenade forms the organising spine of the proposal," said SOM. "By positioning new construction alongside the historic pier, the design preserves the existing structure below while creating a pedestrian environment above."

"Shops, restaurants, and places to gather would line the route, connecting the city to activities and views across Corio Bay," the studio added.

How luxurious are we talking?

The numbers answer that themselves. The development will contain around 280 apartments and 12 waterfront villas with individual yacht berths. Floating platforms will carry activity spaces and sports courts on the bay itself.

SOM hopes the development will establish Cunningham Pier as "both a neighbourhood on the water and a destination for Geelong's residents and visitors".

A pier built for steam-age freight, now hosting parked cars, becomes a residential address with private moorings. That's quite a career arc for a deck.

Does the design serve the bay itself?

SOM says the redevelopment will create new marine habitats at the pier to support biodiversity. "This ecological ambition forms part of a broader approach that considers the waterfront as a place for both public life and marine life," said the studio.

The Geelong project joins a busy stretch of SOM work. The firm recently unveiled a tiered skyscraper on a waterfront site in Chicago and plans for a 20-storey data centre in Kansas City. A high-rise rising from a working pier, however, is the rarer brief, and Cunningham Pier's next chapter will test whether luxury programing and genuine public access can share the same deck over Corio Bay.