Areas we service · Australia

Architectural rendering · New South Wales

Renders from your model, for projects in New South Wales.

New South Wales seats a room of designers in front of the consent authority, and that one arrangement should decide how a set of views is built. Design review here is written into the instrument rather than offered as a courtesy. Chapter 4 of State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021 gives legal force to the Apartment Design Guide, sends certain applications to the design review panel for the local government area they sit in, where a panel has been constituted there, and requires the consent authority to take that panel's advice into consideration when it determines the matter. Where an environmental planning instrument carries a design excellence clause it will point at a design competition, at design review, or at both, and where it points at a competition a jury usually picks the winning scheme before the development application is lodged. Your first reader is therefore an architect who will say what is missing, and your last reader is a planner holding that architect's letter. Make the set for the first one and the second inherits an argument already had.

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Where renders get used here

Three processes read pictures here, and only one of them is the application itself. A development application for residential apartment development goes to the design review panel for its local government area in the circumstances sections 145 and 146 of the Housing SEPP set out, and the panel weighs the proposal against the nine design quality principles in Schedule 9 and against the Apartment Design Guide. That referral falls away in more than one circumstance, one of them a project that has already been through a competitive design process. Those competitions run to the Design Competition Guidelines, which want competing design teams, a jury deciding on design criteria, and a competition report recording the qualities the winning scheme has to keep through the design integrity stage that follows. One line in those guidelines should shape every brief: the competition manager is to exclude material additional to the requested submission documents, such as extra renders or models. Above that sits State significant development, where the Independent Planning Commission determines certain applications and can sit in public. Kallo supplies imagery against your team's list. Your architect and planner write the list, lodge it and defend it.

Who decides

Government Architect NSW

Authors the Design Competition Guidelines and the panel manual councils run their sessions from, convenes the State Design Review Panel, and endorses the alternative strategy a residential state significant proposal needs before it may skip a competition.

Independent Planning Commission

Determines certain State significant development applications under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, and can meet in public, which puts the same views in front of readers who are neighbours rather than designers.

Local design review panels

Constituted under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021, they take the design team's material before the session and answer it with a design advice letter that the next round of images has to satisfy.

City of Sydney

Runs its own competitive design policy inside its local government area in place of the state guidelines, and has a model team sign off the electronic and physical models an application carries before lodgement.

Preparing your brief

A New South Wales project may need separate presentation sets for design review and for property marketing. Start with the written requirements your architect or planner has provided, and identify the images that belong to each purpose. Include the latest design, finish selections, site context and the review date. For an apartment launch, tell us which homes and shared spaces buyers need to understand, and whether the work is for a website, display suite or sales brochure. The agreed brief records those uses and who signs off the final material.

What gets built here

One of the routes here changes what an image is for. The NSW Housing Pattern Book adds terraces, manor homes, row homes and mid-rise apartment patterns on their own approval route, where the scheme has already been judged and an image is selling a site rather than a design. The others put the design itself in front of a panel or a jury. Residential apartment development under Chapter 4 of the Housing SEPP covers residential flat buildings and shop top housing. A design excellence clause in a local environmental plan pulls a proposal into a competition, into design review, or into both. Residential State significant development may instead take the design competition exemption pathway, which turns on a strategy Government Architect NSW has endorsed.

Working with Kallo

Kallo works with your team wherever your project is based. Share the approved design, the audience and the date you need the work. Your proposal confirms the images or film, review stages and delivery schedule.

  • Your presentation or launch date helps shape an agreed delivery schedule.
  • The proposal sets out the review stages and the changes included in your project.
  • Bring feedback together so your team can approve a clear direction.
  • Larger sets and complex projects get a confirmed schedule before work begins.
  • Project files and images are private unless publication is approved in writing.

Units and sheets

Units

Metric

Sheets

ISO A series

Models arrive in millimetres and presentation sets are laid out on A1 and A3, matching the sheet sizes lodgement portals expect.

Questions

Our application is going to a design review panel. What imagery is worth having ready?

Ask your design team to confirm the panel's presentation requirements and circulation date. The useful set may include views of the wider setting, the proposal and key relationships with neighbouring buildings. Allow time for your team to review the material before it is circulated.

We are entering a competitive design process. Can you add a few extra renders to strengthen the entry?

No, and asking would work against you. The Design Competition Guidelines have the competition manager exclude material beyond the requested submission documents, naming extra renders and models specifically, so that the design teams are judged evenly. Send us the submission requirements and we produce exactly that list, at exactly those sizes, and nothing else.

The council wants a 3D electronic model and a scale model. Do you produce those?

No. Those are separate submission items for your documentation team to arrange. Kallo provides the agreed images or film for your presentation. Please include the council's written requirements so the proposal makes clear which deliverables we are supplying.

Can a render demonstrate design excellence?

It cannot. Design excellence is a quality of the proposal, and a jury or a panel of design experts decides whether the proposal has it. An image explains a scheme to that room quickly and fairly, which is worth a great deal, but it proves nothing on its own. Kallo does not advise on planning and does not prepare any part of a consent application.

Our project is State significant. Who actually ends up looking at these images?

More people than on a local application, and not all of them are designers. Assessment sits with the department, the State Design Review Panel may review the scheme, and the Independent Planning Commission determines some applications and can meet in public. Views that read at a glance to a non-specialist earn their keep in that setting, so ask for context and eye-level rather than only the aerial.

What we checked, September 2026

This page names the bodies and the checks rather than quoting rules, because rules change. It is background for planning a set of images, not planning advice. Your project team stays responsible for what is lodged.

Other areas

Tell us about your project.

Tell us what you are planning, who the images are for and when you need them. We will discuss the right views and film for the project, then prepare a tailored proposal.

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Already know what you need? Send a project brief.

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