Sydneysiders were astonished in 2009 when White Rabbit Gallery opened in grungy Chippendale – a hop and a skip from Central Station. In what amounts to a generous gesture to the city, the four-storeyed non-commercial gallery, fashioned from an old knitting factory, showcases Judith Neilson’s cutting-edge, politically charged contemporary Chinese art collection and includes a tranquil street-level tea house.

For architect William Smart, 45, working on the conversion was “a dream come true. The idea I had was to make the gallery very connected with the public domain,” says Smart, who was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, raised in rural Western Australia and has called Sydney home for 18 years.

“I fought quite hard to have no security grilles on the ground floor so if you went there after hours you could still see into the gallery,” says Smart.

His lighting solution gave the gallery an unusual aesthetic. “We introduced large window boxes that sit within the existing opening and, instead of having louvres, we used old fluorescent light tubes,” Smart says. “These glass tubes shade but also illuminate the space.”

Sprouting near White Rabbit, on the former Carlton United Breweries site, is an even more astonishing new project: the $2-billion Central Park complex, which includes avant-garde apartment buildings, open spaces, a shopping mall and public art. The most striking feature is a monumental cantilever supporting a plunge pool and gardens for residents in the ritziest apartments.

Smart’s atelier designed one of the building’s interiors, drawing on the glossy finishes of luxury cars and yachts for inspiration. It’s also creating a residential block that will, through bi-coloured louvres, change colour depending on where the viewer stands.

“I feel that, in the city generally, the standard of design is being elevated,” says Smart, who leads 30 staff members at Smart Design Studio in Surry Hills. Crowning the 1890s’ brick building from which he works is the apartment Smart shares with his partner and their short-haired pointer, Dougal.