Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 182 May 2024 i Landscape Architecture Australia

Jac Semmler Jac Semmler is a horticulturalist, educator and director of plant practice Super Bloom. She has particular expertise in dry summer planting design. Marina Couchman Marina Couchman is a landscape architecture graduate working in Meanjin. Her work is informed by place and identity, landscape ecology and cultural heritage. Joshua Zeunert Joshua Zeunert is a Scientia associate professor at UNSW and a registered landscape architect. His research focuses on regenerative landscapes and food systems. Emma Sheppard-Simms Emma Sheppard-Simms is owner of Plantery Landscape Architecture located on Wadawarrung Country (Ballarat). She combines design with teaching, writing and research. Simon Kilbane Simon Kilbane is a senior lecturer at Deakin University. He won an AILA National Award of Excellence for Research, Policy and Communications in 2018. Alistair Kirkpatrick Alistair Kirkpatrick is a senior…

Jake Robinson is a microbial ecologist and researcher in restoration genomics at Flinders University. He has a particular interest in the relationship between biodiversity and human health and on developing new strategies for restoring ecosystems. His book Invisible Friends was released in 2023, and his upcoming book Treewilding: Our past, present and future relationship with forests is due out this year. Emily Wong – What is the relationship between microbes, urban environments and human health? Jake Robinson – The biodiversity hypothesis, also known as the “old friend’s hypothesis,” argues that we’ve co-evolved over thousands of years with trillions of microorganisms in our natural environments, and that these have played key roles in training and regulating our immune system. The vast numbers of microbes in our bodies play really important roles…

The Landscape Studio is a Nairobibased landscape architecture practice with a diverse portfolio of work across East Africa. Founders Chloe Humphreys and Michael Humphreys presented at Melbourne School of Design in late 2023 as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series. While in Melbourne, they spoke with Emily Wong about honesty of materials, their relationship with contractors, and respecting the existing qualities of a place. Emily Wong – How would you describe the ethos of your practice? Michael Humpreys – We see landscape architecture as the intermediate space between the human space and the “natural” space. Everything that we do is about being respectful and being honest, and most of all we want to respect the place. That’s why we start with what’s there – we want to preserve the existing…

Many of the articles in this May issue of Landscape Architecture Australia consider how we can foster richer and closer relationships between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of our environments. Among the projects reviewed in this edition are an inner-city waterway renaturalisation (page 28) and a new regional whalewatching platform (page 14). Catherin Bull celebrates the many achievements of the ambitious Hanlon Park/Bur’uda Waterway Rejuvenation in Brisbane and draws attention to the vital role ongoing site management plays in ensuring positive outcomes that endure. Similarly, the key design goal of the Cape Solander Whale Watching Platform was to foster meaningful experiences with nature; Simon Kilbane unpacks the newly built result in his review. These are landscapes that we can easily see and touch, but how can we engage with places…

Brisbane City Council (BCC) estimates that there are 14.5 kilometres of fully lined concrete channels within its overall drainage network, including 1.6 kilometres within the Norman Creek catchment of central Brisbane. Heavy rains and flooding are regular events in this city, and managing life with and around them is a constant challenge, especially in areas like Norman Creek, which incorporates eight of its most urbanized inner suburbs. With climate change, and flood frequency and intensity increasing, the characteristics of each event vary, and are complicated by the specifics of local topography and waterway structure, tortuous drainage paths and the uneven distribution of urbanization. Australia’s largest local government by area and budget, BCC is largely responsible for the planning, administration and management of the city’s infrastructure. After a century of flood…

The language of management is entangled with observation and evaluation and can lead to interventions that respond more sensitively to the garden as a community. Is the language we use and how gardens and landscapes are cared for constraining our approach to planting design? Coming from the perspective of a gardener, the word “maintenance,” for instance, doesn’t seem compatible with the activity of caring for plants, gardens and larger public landscapes. The assumptions embedded in the language of “maintenance” do not sit well with the nature of plants, their life cycles or the way plants are adapting and responding to our changing climate. To “maintain” something is to control it – and such a language of order and control constrains the potential and possibilities of where our gardens and landscapes…

Jury comment The projects in this year’s Landscape Student Prize include a scheme for a system of novel habitats that balances the needs of both human and non-human inhabitants, a project that addresses women’s safety in urban environments, and a design for a coastal site that addresses sea-level rise and encourages greater environmental stewarship. The jury is pleased to announce Towards Reconciliation: Decolonizing Design in Melbourne’s Contemporary Cultural Plaza by Hiu Ying (Jenny) Tin of The University of Melbourne as this year’s national winner. The project explores the complexities of engaging First Nations narratives in built environment projects and tests how landscape architects can decolonize their design practices. The project creates strategies that disturb existing relationships, unsettling established ways of thinking about the site and its many components and layers.…

Bruce Mackenzie was a doyen of the profession of landscape architecture in Australia. His practices, Bruce Mackenzie and Associates (BMA) and Bruce Mackenzie Design, jointly spanned more than fifty years. He was a reflective practitioner who valued empirical and practical knowledge and had an unshakeable conviction that good design sense must, first and foremost, consider the essential attributes of the Australian environment. Always the innovator and tireless campaigner, Mackenzie led from the front for the profession of landscape architecture and the public alike. Born in Paddington, New South Wales in 1932, Mackenzie spent his childhood years leading an independent lifestyle, exploring Sydney’s metropolitan landscapes in the broadest possible sense. Traversing those parts of the city that were natural, those that were urban, as well as those that were degraded or…

As landscape practitioners, we often wonder whether we are still in an emerging profession. What would it be like to be able to tell every planning minister and every climate-adaptation leader that within the built environment professions, landscape architecture is the one of choice? As landscape architects, our incredibly diverse skill set puts us in good stead to be at the forefront of initiatives around climate resilience, social equality and the creation of great places. However, we do have a challenge ahead. The number of future landscape architecture professionals is dwindling. In recent years, landscape architecture programs around Australia have been reporting a decline in student intakes. Notwithstanding the pressures caused by increased costs of living and issues around program funding and structure, landscape architecture programs are still not receiving…

With learning options diversifying to include an array of online platforms, many Australian universities have been facing the challenge of justifying a sprawling suburban existence. Tactical placemaking efforts have been looking to counter this trend, but their effectiveness has been limited, with some universities choosing to relocate to the CBD. The new Exchange Innovation Precinct (Exchange) at Curtin University’s Bentley campus provides a model for supercharging flagging suburban campuses through dense mixed-use urbanism. Located towards the periphery of the campus, this dynamic precinct features four significant new buildings: a hotel by Six Degrees (completed in 2021), two student accommodation buildings designed by Nettleton Tribe (completed in 2022) and, most recently, the School of Design and Built Environment (SDBE) by Wardle (also completed in 2022). Knitting these together is the design…

Summer Hill in Sydney’s inner-west looks like a toy town, the kind a railway miniature enthusiast might make. A lively high street leads to a train station dating from the late nineteenth century. Parks a walkable distance from public transport are shaded by long-established trees. The skyline is punctuated by a familiar mix of Victorian chimneys, sandstone steeples, jacarandas and palms. In a city that continues to sprawl, the combination of amenity and the fine-grain scale of the urban fabric found here is a rare and increasingly expensive proposition. I’m here to visit Bates Smart and 360 Degrees Landscape Architects’ design for the IGLU student accommodation, curious to see how a new typology of student accommodation sits within the historic fabric of this urban village. The first thing I notice…