POLL: Wollongong's new shopping mall is competing against four other futuristic retail developments from Norway, Indonesia, China and the United Arab Emirates for a New York-based architecture and design award.
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GPT's Wollongong Central expansion, which opened in October, has been shortlisted in the 2015 Architizer awards, which are run in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal magazine.
A jury of more than 300 experts selects five finalists in each category, as well as a winner.
Each category also has a public choice winner based on an online voting system, which attracted 200,000 votes from around the world in 2014.
A massive Abu Dhabi shopping district, a residential town square in Norway, a beachside Bali retail resort and a futuristic Shanghai shopping centre are also shortlisted in the shopping centre category.
GPT development manager Steve Turner has urged Illawarra residents to get behind the Wollongong building, designed by architect Susanne Pini, saying the region needed to "show the world that the people of the region are behind [the city]".
"Our aim was always to create a venue that would tie together the old and the new of the region, providing a canvas around which the city could continue to grow and develop. Wollongong is a city with a bold future and it deserves to be showcased on the international stage," he said.
"We are just one of the many exciting developments in town and it is gratifying to discover that an international audience thinks so too."
The six-level Keira Street building has attracted significant attention for its unusual architectural and design features, which include the shapes of Illawarra flame trees pressed into the concrete walls, craggy steel blades resembling the city's old blast furnaces and 4000 colanders that line the roof of the fresh-food level and hark back to the city's migrant kitchens.
Residents need to sign up to the Architizer website to be able to vote in any of the award categories.