In 2009, Tyrrell Studio won the Australian National Unbuilt Award for Landscape Architecture. This was for a project that Mark Tyrrell undertook after his involvement with community based work in South Africa in collaboration with 'The Global Studio' action research group. The jury report is as follows:

DIEPSLOOT ENVIRONMENTAL MASTERPLAN 2009
‘Of the more than fifty projects entered in Unlandscaped 2009, this project resonated the most strongly with the jury. It operates on a number of scales and proposes a convincing way forward for the Diepsloot community. Through a series of precise, well-designed landscape gestures, the project goes beyond environmental indices and normative community consultation. The surgical precision of the design gestures mediates top down and bottom up urban design strategies. The project has a middle ground that appreciates the way in which the design will be appropriated by the community. The designer has considered the complexity of this place through careful observation of the innate qualities of informal settlements – it is not an aesthetic clean-up. The project accepts informality and spatial appropriation as part of its conceptual framework and at the same time encourages ecologically reLevant infrastructures. The project is not just altruistic – it finds dignity and value in the informal.'