Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 166 May 2020 i Landscape Architecture Australia

A new performing arts precinct and the redevelopment of a heritage-listed wharf have both received gongs at the 2020 Minister’s Awards for Urban Design in Queensland. Twenty nominations were received in the program’s fourth year, with two projects receiving awards and two receiving commendations. Cairns Performing Arts Precinct by CA Architects, Cox Architecture and Andrew Prowse Landscape Architect with Cairns Regional Council was one of two award-winning projects selected by the jury. The project encompasses a new theatre (which replaced the former Cairns Civic Theatre) completed in 2018 and tropical parklands and outdoor event space that opened to the public in 2016. “The [Cairns Performing Arts Centre and Munro Martin Parklands] cleverly work together to create a range of cultural event opportunities ranging in size and scale,” the jury stated.…

The Goolarabooloo community have led the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail along Western Australia’s Kimberley coast, north of Broome, since 1987.1 The trail follows the land of the traditional song cycle for 80 kilometres along the beaches, dune systems and red sand bush. It is land that has been home to Aboriginal people for millennia – the same trail, the same camping places, the same fishing spots. Middens are filled with remnants of past food; and artefacts, including spear heads, charcoal, flints and grinding stones, are testament to the longevity and continuity of law and culture. Established by retired Aboriginal drover, Goolarabooloo senior lawman and storyteller Paddy Roe, the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail was initiated as a way to ensure the Goolarabooloo community were able to continue walking Country, in doing so ensuring…

When Captain Cook visited, in the 1700s, what we now know as Sydney Harbour, he described abundant oyster reefs, tidal fringes lined with saltmarsh and mangroves, and sandy beaches. Today, more than two and a half centuries later, seawalls dominate the foreshore of the harbour, with oyster reefs long lost and forgotten. Compared to the habitats they have replaced, these seawalls typically support less biodiversity. Since 2015, the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) has partnered with Melbourne-based designer Alex Goad of Reef Design Lab (RDL) to bring seawalls back to life. The relatively flat and featureless surface of seawalls provides little space for marine plants and animals to live, and those that do, struggle to find protection from predators, wave action and the midday sun. The poor habitat quality…

The bushfires during the Australian summer illustrated climate change in the most heartbreaking way. Most would find it impossible to forget the images – burned koalas sitting on blackened earth, firefighters driving directly into raging infernos and terrified holidaymakers stumbling through that eerie red dawn. While many still quarrel over the facts, no one can deny that we are living in a hotter, more unpredictable and politically destabilized world. Innovators respond by developing technologies that allow us to continue our way of life as if nothing has really changed. From cloud seeding to desalination, electric cars to renewable energy technologies, vegan meat to genetic modification, technology has become the panacea for all modern ills. A far less common response has been to question our blind adoption of new technologies. This…

Sky Park, One Melbourne Quarter Docklands, Victoria Built on the land of the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation Aspect Studios In evaluating landscape architectural work, the immediate, grounded sense of a place is critical. However, it’s the broader context that interests memore: how the built form has come into being and the external contingencies it responds to; how the ethics of practice come into play; how collaborations coalesce, solidify and are held. That is true for the most complex projects and the simplest, across scales and typologies. And these considerations are particularly illustrative in the case of the Sky Park at One Melbourne Quarter. Designed by Aspect Oculus, the Sky Park is a part of the public space component of the One Melbourne Quarter development, the…

When we meet at the practice’s studio in Melbourne’s Carlton North, its founder is keen to deflect focus from herself. “The story doesn’t have to be just about me, does it?” she asks. Indeed, Jeavons Landscape Architects (JLA) has evolved from its early days, which found Jeavons working from home as a sole practitioner. Today, some three decades later, Jeavons and co-director Bruce Grillmeier lead a close-knit team of dedicated designers who have collectively built an impressive portfolio of beautifully crafted, carefully considered play spaces. Designed by former JLA senior landscape architect Felicity Brown, the sensory courtyard at Marnebek School (a school hosting children with intellectual disabilities) is an exemplary project, which earnt the practice a Landscape Architecture Award in the Small Projects category of the 2017 AILA VIC Awards.…

Published in 1969, Design with Nature, by Scottish landscape architect and planner Ian McHarg, was a manifesto, a seminal text translated into multiple languages. It is still in print today. McHarg, who was born in Scotland in 1920 and died in 2001, was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and a public personality. With shows on American television he was politically well connected, talking to chat show hosts and walking with presidents. Of McHarg’s strengths, his capacity to communicate complex ideas was well-known – and he is often attributed with bringing the word ecology into general use. McHarg and his ideas were a product of late 1960s environmental thinking and, in the words of American practitioner Laurie Olin, “forever changed the field of…

UNI OF NEWCASTLE STEMM BUILDING Plans for a new landmark science and technology research and teaching building at the Callaghan campus of the University of Newcastle have been published as part of a New South Wales State Significant Development Application. The project, designed by Lyons and EJE Architecture, with landscape architects Aspect Studios, will being together the university’s science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine departments into a single building and will also involve the creation of a new plaza between the STEMM building and the campus’s Great Hall. aspect-studios.com WAVE DESIGN WINS ST KILDA JETTY Portuguese architecture practice JJs Architectura has won the design ideas competition for a replacement jetty in Melbourne’s St Kilda. Titled “The Wave,” the winning concept is inspired by the “fluid geometries of the coast,” and…

Darling Square Darling Harbour, New South Wales Built on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation Aspect Studios Darling Square is located within the broader Darling Harbour precinct, an area arguably emerging as the happening end of the Sydney CBD, with an increasingly busy skyline and streets and a growing network of public city spaces. Configured in tandem with large public-private partnerships, these new public spaces offer a variety of experiences for the community, that will be increasingly valued in the context of Sydney’s growing and densifying urban condition. Situated midway along the partly pedestrian, 1.1-kilometre-long, 20-metre-wide spine that links Darling Harbour to Central Station, via Tumbalong Boulevard and Quay Street, Darling Square by Aspect Studio’s Sydney office, is a diverse, inclusive and community-focused addition to the…

Since August 2017, the Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) project, a five-year program set for completion in 2022, has aimed to improve human, environmental and ecological health in urban informal settlements through the implementation of a new approach to the use and provision of water. Working across nine countries, the RISE team of public health specialists, engineers, architects, ecologists, social scientists, economists, community development practitioners and landscape architects is implementing projects in 12 informal settlements in Makassar, Indonesia and 12in Suva, Fiji’s capital. Across its 24 sites, RISE is embracing the participation of some 1,200 households throughout South-East Asia and the Pacific. The project, funded in various parts by the Wellcome Trust, Asian Development Bank and the New Zealand Aid program, is being implemented, in part, using a…

Landscape Architecture Australia editor Emily Wong spoke to Thai landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom in the lead-up to her lecture at The Architecture Symposium which took place in Brisbanein March. Emily Wong — You run Porous City Network, in addition to Landprocess, your studio. How do these reflect different – but connected – modes of practice? Kotchakorn Voraakhom — In 2010, I returned to Thailand to establish my practice, Landprocess. At this time, Bangkok was continuing to rapidly urbanize, a process that was eating away at the city’s canals, waterways and existing natural infrastructure. Despite the environmental obstacles Bangkok was facing, the people living there didn’t really acknowledge enough the existence of climate change. As a landscape architect, I felt the client-based approach to sustainable design wasn’t enough – we needed…