Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 155 August 2017 i Landscape Architecture Australia

WINNER COMMENDATIONS Logan City Council has won the inaugural Queensland Deputy Premier’s Award for Urban Design for its Beenleigh Town Square project, a collaboration with AECOM, MRCagney and Wilson Architects. In presenting the award, Deputy Premier and Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Jackie Trad praised Logan City Council for transforming a six-way intersection into a vibrant community space. “The council has really demonstrated a passion for great urban design in creating such a wonderful gathering and focal point for local people,” Ms Trad said. “They were bold and innovative in their approach and it’s developed a new community heart where people can gather and enjoy great events like musical performances or farmers’ markets. The Beenleigh Town Square has also generated direct economic benefits for the local business community by re-shaping…

It is thought that humans prefer living where they can see scattered trees and, sometimes, water. We often plant trees to fill this evolutionary desire because it mimics the African landscapes where modern humans originated. Aboriginal people lived well in this most variable climate on earth for perhaps fifty thousand years and survived the Pleistocene ice age, during which time the climate was twice as dry and four times as windy as it is today. The cultural landscapes that Europeans observed when they arrived in Australia to start a new society had been constructed by a people with an intimate knowledge of the use of fire – a landscape practice the Europeans would have been unfamiliar with and afraid of. These landscapes looked, in the minds of the Europeans, “like…

Rosie Halsmith — Could you tell me about the role of the landscape architecture team at the Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife? Nathan Greenhill — As landscape architects in the department, we hold a fortunate role in being able to plan and design for visitors’ interactions with our diverse landscapes, including day use, picnicking, trail use and camping. The department has the principal requirement to protect and manage conservation values, and to protect and conserve the culture of the land for Aboriginal people. By providing appropriate and sustainable recreation experiences in these landscapes, as opposed to restricting use, we enable people to enjoy and connect to these environments and strengthen their understanding of the conservation and landscape values that are critical to their protection. RH — What was…

Concepts of the picturesque and of what is natural are challenged by our desire to inhabit and conserve landscape. These landscapes can become highly contested spaces. Our many teleological constructions of landscape bound, embed and locate the built form and work on it over time. Our conception of landscape is a potentially resilient thing, emerging perhaps out of displacements (our need to quantify the distance and direction as we move from place to place and in turn communicate this journey). Our desire to hold on to an aesthetic of landscape and survey our Eden is strong. Perhaps this desire is a wrong turn in itself, if we are to adapt to a rapidly changing environment as a result of global warming. Our understanding of the world being constructed of “natural…

Whenever a cyclone makes landfall it is followed by a familiar sequence. People affected are persistent about the damage, the costs and the need for insurers to act now to compensate their losses; the state and federal governments extensively discuss who is to blame; and billions of dollars are spent on relocating people and repairing the damage – a state-level levy may even be necessary to pay for all the extra costs. In the wake of 2017’s Cyclone Debbie, the Queensland state and federal budgets are expected to take a $1.5 billion hit, with the overall damage bill to infrastructure predicted to reach $2 billion. This is not to mention the devastation experienced by families and entire communities due to loss of lives and livelihoods. We know the impacts that…

This is a story of working against the tide for small farms in Australia. While many market gardens and other productive small farms on the fringes of large Australian cities are being gobbled up by suburban development, further afield the number of small rural holdings is increasing, as larger farms within commuting distance of Australian cities are subdivided into smaller “rural lifestyle” blocks. Planning authorities often resist this pattern of regional land development on the basis that it turns productive farming land into nonproductive land, and for fear of unmanaged weeds and biosecurity problems. Surprisingly, large areas of rural land are managed as small holdings. For example, the Palerang Rural Lands Study Report (2015) estimated that more than three thousand square kilometres of the rural land in the former Palerang…

Today’s environmental challenges – such as climate change and biodiversity loss – are highly complex and unpredictable. Learning how to design with uncertainty1 is one of the most important tasks we face in the twentyfirst century. But while chaos theory and complexity studies are hot topics in modern sciences, the word “complexity” in the design discourse rarely expands beyond its colloquial meaning. In ecological design the oversimplified, naturalistic notion of “returning an ecosystem to its pristine pre-settlement conditions” is still widely perceived as an acceptable description of what ecological design is about. Our design language is increasingly disconnected from modern sciences and as a result, it is poorly equipped to engage with the complexity and uncertainty of today’s challenges. The language of complexity in modern sciences Since the time of…

Published since 1979, Landscape Architecture Australia is the only print journal dedicated to the independent review of landscape architecture, urban design and planning in Australia. The journal provides in-depth analysis of the issues that matter to our built environment, from the micro to the macro, from the garden to the city. *AILA members can receive a discount by using the code LAA#17 at checkout. Prices in AUD for a one-year subscription. Four issues per year. Architecture Media Pty Ltd, Level 6, 163 Eastern Road, South Melbourne, Vic 3205 Australia, T +61 3 8699 1000 F +61 3 9696 2617 subscribe@archmedia.com.au 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s…

ENLOCUS MASTERPLAN TO TRANSFORM REGIONAL TOWN OF RAINBOW In the north-west Victorian town of Rainbow, a masterplan designed by Enlocus will revitalize a historic school to provide space for creative production, exhibition and cultural connection. Along with five other towns, Rainbow received $350,000 from the Victorian Government’s Small Town Transformations program and Regional Arts Victoria. The project, titled The Oasis: Creativity on the Fringe of the Desert, focuses on providing flexible spaces that can simultaneously cater for everyday activities and major events. Other elements in the design include misting points, an indigenous food garden, a skatepark and legacy tree plantings. enlocus.com URBAN RESILIENCE LEADER LINA LIAKOU TO OPEN 2017 AUSTRALIAN URBAN DESIGN AWARDS The opening address for this year’s Australian Urban Design Awards will be delivered by Lina Liakou, Deputy…

In recent years there has been considerable debate about the shift to renewables in the context of diminishing resources and the spectre of climate change. In Australia, one of the most prominent and ongoing debates surrounds the development of windfarms in regional areas and their visual impact on the character and values of pastoral landscapes. In 2009 there was bipartisan agreement that the country needed to act quickly on climate change. The Gillard Government proposed a price on emissions (the carbon tax) and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) increased from the 2001 Howard Government target of 9,500 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2010 to 45,000 GWh by 2020. Government incentives to meet this target led to a surge in the planning for windfarm projects by local and international windfarm developers,…

Koondrook Wharf Koondrook, Victoria Terroir with Hirst Projects The Koondrook Wharf, designed for Gannawarra Shire Council by Terroir with Hirst Projects, began as a feasibility study in 2012 and was completed in 2016. As a former local of North West Victoria, born and raised in the Mallee dust, I have maintained an active interest in regional projects, particularly those that demonstrate a complex design narrative, yet as a final output exhibit an effortless composition within the rural landscape. The Koondrook Wharf is a wonderful example of this. Through conversations with Scott Balmforth, founding director at Terroir’s Hobart office, I gained an appreciation not only for the complexities of operating as a design consultancy in a remote location, but also for the advantage of investing in community engagement as a key…

Iam a woman in my fifties; I am not Aboriginal and I am learning about Ngunawal1 pathways with guidance from the Ngunawal community. I have learnt that working with Ngunawal perspectives on landscape respectfully and with understanding relies on narrating all-of-landscape stories. Ancient river corridors are as prominent in a narrative of Ngunawal territory as are those of the rivers of the present day. The telling of a story about the river corridors and the mountains and ridges between them provides a metaphorical pathway, a storied line mapping conceptual and emotional interaction with both the ancient and present-day physical environment. Storied lines might link a lake, mountain, hill or rock outcrop to ancient spirit beings and to events that shaped important features of the physical world, connecting them all to…

C ity walls and city gates are ancient phenomena, as old as cities themselves and a vital element in their control and governance: in collecting taxes, resisting contagion and excluding real or perceived troublemakers. But the most important role of past city gates was representational: a signboard conveying public information, a surface for the display of power through heraldic shields and ornament and a means of warning – telling citizens and visitors what would befall them if they disobeyed the rules of the city. The fortified walls of most cities have long been dismantled by shifts in technology, city gates giving way to train stations, airports and freeways. In the contemporary city the real boundaries are virtual: the interface of the screen and the camera, the security regimes of high-tech…

This photo shows tactile evidence of the use of the natural environment by the first inhabitants of the Yass-Canberra-Queanbeyan region, the Ngunawal people. There is a general lack of understanding within the wider community of the cultural significance of trees like these. They tell a story of their various and distinct uses. Trees that have had the bark removed (scarred trees) have served different purposes; for example, the bark may have been used to make a shield for battle or hunting, or a coolamon to transport babies or food that has been gathered, such as seeds or yam daisy. Culturally manipulated trees (ring trees) within the ACT have been formed for various reasons, such as giving directions or marking a significant site. There may have been many more such trees…