UTS architecture academics, alumni and students feature prominently in one of the five proposals selected as finalists in the East Darling Harbour urban design competition, an initiative by the NSW Government to redevelop the present site of the city's container port.

The submission led by Hill Thalis, the firm of UTS lecturer Philip Thalis, has been selected from a field of 137 anonymous entries in the international competition.

The brief is to transform a 22-hectare maritime industrial site into a combination of public space, commercial and residential development - the most significant city site to become available for redevelopment in decades.

Thalis said ten years of research and teaching in Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building had informed the plan, which the selection jury has praised for its "unique understanding and response to the historic working nature of the site."

"This shows the value of real and sustained research into the city and the value of having practitioners as fully integrated members of the academic staff in the UTS Architecture program," Thalis said.

"We bring to teaching and research an engagement with Sydney's pressing urban and architectural issues, tempered by a longer term view about what constitutes successful and sustainable projects.

"The design team includes not only me, but Paul Berkemeier, Sheila Tawalo and Michael Zanardo who have been successful tutors for a number of years at UTS. Sheila and Michael are also UTS architecture honours graduates.

"Another honours graduate on the team is 2005 university medallist Alex Koll, along with current UTS architecture students, including Louise Hugo-Hamman."

Thalis said the proposal was probably the most straightforward of the finalists, an approach founded on an understanding of Sydney's "particular cultural history" in undertaking large-scale developments.

"The aim was to put forward ideas that were robust enough to be well implemented over an extended time frame."

As a winner of the 1992 national competition to design the Sydney Olympic village, it's a process Thalis already knows well.

In stage two of the East Darling Harbour competition the finalists will be asked to develop their entries in response to comments from the competition jury and the public. A winner is due to be announced in either February or March next year.