International design practice Warren and Mahoney is teaming up with urban planners and designers Oxigen, to deliver plans for the new precinct, which will bring life to the underused Civic Square and its surrounds.

Over the next 12 months, the team will “develop a precinct plan that reflects the needs and aspirations of a young and dynamic community that values community life, social inclusion and financial and environmental sustainability”, says the City Renewal Authority.

The precinct - which is east of City Hill bounded by Vernon Circle and London Circuit - is home to the Canberra Theatre Centre and Playhouse, the Canberra Museum and Gallery, the ACT Legislative Assembly and a government office block and hotel being built by Terry Snow's Capital Property Group.

It also includes a government car park earmarked for mixed-use development, and is next to another car park set aside for a future convention centre.

In the original tender documents, the City Renewal Authority said the area was a "missed opportunity".

Gavin Kain of Warren and Mahoney said the project was symbolically important.

“Canberra Civic and Arts Precinct is really important in the context of Australia and even potentially beyond, so you want to be involved in those types of projects,” he said.

“Having been involved in similar projects in other cities, how do you take what are interesting and important buildings, arts facilities, plazas, potentially convention centres which in many of our cities are typically places that can be low on energy and activity, and turn them into places that are vibrant? That's a challenge that I've been involved with previously and was keen to be able to bring some of those experiences to Canberra.”

He said one of his recent projects, working on the post-earthquake blueprint in New Zealand’s Christchurch, had demonstrated how important it was for such projects to work on a practical level.

“They have to inspire and excite, but they have to be able to be sustainable as well,” he said.

“I guess one of the things we bring to it is obviously a design approach, but with an understanding of how cities work, and how great places work and why some places don't work.”

He was looking forward to getting to know the capital.

“Some of the most interesting residential and urban areas in Australia are emerging out of Canberra,” he said.

“Change is there and often it's about seizing particular opportunities and momentum. So this kind of feels like that sort of opportunity and a privilege.”

City Renewal Authority chief executive Malcolm Snow said the successful tender had been one of 17 options.

“Many architects that I talk to acknowledge the fact that the opportunity to work on a study such as this in the national capital is something that they would be very proud to put their name to,” he said.

“I think it's about the fact that it is national capital status, but also the cultural dimension of all of this, where there's an opportunity to through these plans guide what will happen into the future in terms of the decision the ACT government will ultimately make about, not just things like a new Canberra Theatre, but also given the boundaries that we've established for this piece of work.

“It's also about how this precinct can be knitted back into the fabric of the city centre. The cultural economy, as we like to call it, of the city centre is one of the foundational dimensions of our urban renewal effort, and I think everyone that we speak to, our analysis of the consultation, clearly identify that some focus around the opportunities to create a really stunning vibrant really active civic and cultural precinct in Canberra's city centre is vital to that renewal effort.”

The initial design process will result in recommendations for government about the shape and cost of the precinct.

Mr Snow said, “The successful implementation of the study's recommendations have got to be very much based in the practical realities of what it is that will ultimately be needed to convince government to invest in the recommendations."