Innehållsförteckning för Issue 159 August 2018 från Landscape Architecture Australia

The Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) held its 2018 National Awards for Planning Excellence ceremony in Perth on 9 May, awarding people and projects from around Australia for outstanding achievements in planning. New South Wales and Western Australia received the highest number of awards across the program’s twelve categories, with five in New South Wales and four in Western Australia. Elizabeth Quay took out the 2018 Great Place award with the jury lauding the project for transforming a significant waterfront site into a “true cultural landmark” that has considered “how the area would evolve over time and how it would positively contribute to the economic and social development of Perth.” The Hobart Waterfront Renewal project received a commendation in the same category. In the From Plan to Place category regional…

The Adelaide Contemporary Design Competition sought proposals for a much-needed annex to the Art Gallery of South Australia. The new gallery, to be located on the vacated Royal Adelaide Hospital site adjacent to the Adelaide Botanic Garden, may be the first significant building on this prime redevelopment site. This is an opportunity for the state government to set the tone for regeneration and to build on Adelaide’s reputation for creativity, arts and festivals. The current gallery facilities are also at capacity. The two-stage competition began in 2017 when expressions of interest were received from 107 design teams, made up of 525 firms across five continents. A shortlist of six teams proceeded to the second stage to develop concept designs. The teams follow the now familiar and problematic habit of well-known…

Juan Grimm is arguably the most significant landscape designer working in South America today. Quite a number of us came to know of his career through his lectures in Melbourne and subsequent garden tours to Chile. This new volume on Grimm’s work, edited by Claudia Pertuzé, has long been anticipated. Bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountain range, Chile is sometimes referred to as the “thin country.” At 4,270 kilometres long, its average width is 177 kilometres and it contains enormously diverse landscapes, from the Atacama Desert in the north, past the capital Santiago – on the same latitude as Sydney and Buenos Aires – down to the lake district and finally Patagonia, wind-blasted by the roaring forties. The sea and the great mountain chain of the Andes…

DESIGN PRACTICE Landscapology Bligh Tanner LOCATION Ipswich, Queensland YEAR 2016 – 2020 (projected) PROJECT TEAM Landscapology: Amalie Wright, Claudia Bergs, Christina Gnezdiloff Bligh Tanner: Alan Hoban, Stephanie Brown, Ashley Flower Streamology: Geoff Vietz CLIENT Ipswich City Council FLUVIAL GEOMORPHOLOGY Streamology GRAPHICS AND COMMUNICATION DESIGN Nicoleap TIME SCHEDULE Concept design and community engagement: 3 months Documentation stages 1 and 2: 7 months Construction of stage 1: 5 months (under construction) Construction of stage 2: late 2018 Construction of stages 3 and 4 to follow PLANT LIST (PARTIAL) Trees: Angophora subvelutina (broad-leaved apple), Eucalyptus tereticornis (forest red gum), Melaleuca bracteata (black tea-tree), Casuarina glauca (swamp oak), Melaleuca quinquenervia (broad-leaved paperbark) Grasses and sedges: Crinum pedunculatum (swamp lily), Dichanthium sericeum (silky blue grass), Imperata cylindrica (blady grass), Lomandra spp. (mat…

DESIGN PRACTICE Jeavons Landscape Architects LOCATION Clifton Hill, Victoria YEAR 2009 PROJECT TEAM Mary Jeavons, Zoe Metherell, Leong Khoo CLIENT Department of Transport (Victoria) BRIDGE DESIGN MGS Architects FLORA AND FAUNA ASSESSMENT Ecology Australia ARBORIST Homewood Consulting SOIL May Horticultural Services ENGINEER Parsons Brinckerhoff PLANNING AND CONSULTATION Planned Fx HEAD CONTRACTOR John Holland SOFT LANDSCAPING Normark Landscape, Australand Eco Systems TIME SCHEDULE Design, documentation: 24 months Construction: 14 months…

Yagan Square Perth, Western Australia Aspect Studios with Lyons Architecture and Iredale Pedersen Hook Since the early 1990s, the ambitions of Reconciliation have evolved from addressing the misunderstandings of Australian history and race relations to instigating policies and practices that encourage relationships and dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The opening of Perth’s Yagan Square in March 2018 completes a trifecta of post-millennium squares conceived within this shifting framing of Reconciliation; it was preceded by Melbourne’s Federation Square (2002) and the transformation of Adelaide’s Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga (Stage 1 – 2013). Collectively these spaces speak to shifting notions of national identity, Reconciliation and civic life. This latest addition forms a critical piece of Perth’s decade-long City Link redevelopment plan, which aims to address the separation of the city centre from…

Railway Square Midland, Western Australia Place Laboratory Located a thirty-minute drive (around nineteen kilometres) north-east of Perth’s CBD is the heritage suburb of Midland. It was originally established as a site of industry and its history provides a cultural connection that binds it to Fremantle, south-west of Perth, through the development of the rail and heavy infrastructure of the twentieth century. Running contiguous to the Helena River and sitting just beyond historic Guildford, Midland is the final major stop along the north-eastern corridor of Perth. It is seen as the “gateway” to the Swan Valley, Perth’s closest wine region, and to the surrounding hub of the Wheatbelt. Attention to the revitalization and redevelopment of Midland has been ongoing for almost two decades. The economic and social potential of this…

Landscape architecture and architecture both manipulate land. Landscape architects usually do it in a way that is reparative to the natural environment – it goes with the materials at hand. However, the issues are shared ones: in Australia, we will inevitably work on or next to remnant bushland, polluted and degraded land, we will affect waterways and we will always be working on top of the land of the First Nations peoples. All these conditions exist in all the iterations of our “built environment” and “nature.” Both professions can make decisions that enable vegetated space or not, seal the ground or not, join or isolate open space, work with stormwater and overland flow, and so on. These fundamental decisions are (or could be) at the core of a built environment’s…

DESIGN PRACTICE Glas Landscape Architecture LOCATION Tarneit, Victoria YEAR 2014 PROJECT TEAM Mark Gillingham, Jules Ong CLIENT Wyndham City ECOLOGIST Practical Ecology HORTICULTURAL CONSULTANT Annette Warner CIVIL ENGINEER Arup TIME SCHEDULE Design, documentation: 12 months Construction: 4 months PLANT LIST (GRASSLAND ONLY) Mix 1: Themeda triandra (kangaroo grass), Rytidosperma setaceum (bristly wallaby grass) Mix 2: Austrostipa scabra (rough spear grass), Austrostipa bigeniculata (tall spear grass), Poa labillardierei (common tussock-grass) Mix 3: Bothriochloa macra (red-leg grass), Dichanthium sericeum (silky blue grass) Mix 4: Ficinia nodosa (knobby club-rush), Poa labillardierei (common tussock-grass) Mix 5: Hymenanthera dentata (tree violet), Ozothamnus ferrugineus (tree everlasting), Enchylaena tomentosa (ruby saltbush) Assorted forbs (included at 10% of seedmix of the main grass areas): Calocephalus citreus (lemon beauty heads), Chrysocephalum apiculatum (common everlasting), Convolvulus angustissimus (blushing bindweed), Eryngium ovinum (blue devil),…

Repair, Australia’s interpretation of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale’s overall theme of “Freespace,” opened on a delightfully sunny morning at the Giardini. A happy crowd of a hundred and fifty or more waited patiently in the dappled shade at the foot of the ramp that rises gently toward the Australian Pavilion entrance. With opening remarks made and ribbon cut, we entered the black box. Inside the atmosphere was sombre. In the far left corner of the space, at right angles to each other, two large, silent two-channel video projections offered simultaneous different perspectives on a landscape – in elevation on the left and from above on the right. A gently undulating topography of plants from the Victorian Western Plains Grasslands almost filled the pavilion, causing us to tread carefully and…

BRISBANE’S OXLEY CREEK DRAFT MASTERPLAN UNVEILED The Brisbane City Council has released a draft masterplan for the redevelopment of the polluted Oxley Creek. The creek and its surrounds have a long history of agriculture, extractive mining, industrial uses, illegal dumping and wastewater treatment operations. The proposal aims to transform the waterway into a fifteen-kilometre green corridor and recreational parkland that will function as both a sanctuary for wildlife and an “urban playground.” The masterplan was prepared by Oxley Creek Transformation, the wholly council-owned company charged with guiding the vision for the area, with Brisbane studio Lat27. Image: Lat27 and Oxley Creek Transformation oxleycreek.com.au AILA LAUNCHES 2018 INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects has launched the website for its 2018 International Festival of Landscape Architecture, which…

Education is big business in Australia. The surging $28 billion sector1 is now the third largest national export after iron ore and coal, with the onshore international education sector forecast to grow from 650,000 enrolments to 940,000 by 2025.2 The rapid growth has put enormous strain on existing campuses, and university-wide masterplans and large-scale projects have been a dominant feature in Australian architecture and landscape architecture during the past ten to fifteen years. Working at the coalface is Jocelyn Chiew, Manager of Campus Design, Quality and Planning, in the Buildings and Property Division at Australia’s largest university, Monash University. Chiew is not only a trained landscape architect, but also a registered architect and urban designer. Chiew initially intended to be a veterinarian and was studying science before she turned to…

“The harmony of the garden at Brief is unexpected … one of the most famous in the Orient … a proclamation that nature can triumph over the hideous inventions of mankind. In the leafy trees and shrubs the wild birds call and sing. For this is a Paradise, made by the sensibility of one man, created by his patience and love.”1 The object of this poetic paean to the triumph of man over nature is Brief Garden, located a couple of hours’ drive south of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, at the end of a narrow village road winding through tropical farmlands. The man whose sensibility “made” this paradisiacal garden was Bevis Bawa, a dashing raconteur in the vein of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and brother of the architect Geoffrey Bawa.…

DESIGN PRACTICE TCL (Taylor Cullity Lethlean) LOCATION Winton North, Victoria YEAR 2012 – ongoing PROJECT TEAM Scott Adams, Andrew Blight CLIENT Winton Wetlands (formerly Winton Wetlands Committee of Management) BUSINESS STRATEGY & LEAD COMMUNITY CONSULTATION McKinna et al TOURISM CONSULTANT Sanmor and Associates TRAFFIC ENGINEER Arup WETLANDS CONSULTANT Designflow COST PLANNER Prowse Quantity Surveyors TIME SCHEDULE Design and documentation: 12 months Construction: 2012 – ongoing…

DESIGN PRACTICE Sue Barnsley Design Landscape Architects LOCATION Darlinghurst, New South Wales YEAR 2007 PROJECT TEAM Sue Barnsley, Kirsty Kendall, Kate Taylor, Stephen Merchant CLIENT City of Sydney STRUCTURAL AND CIVIL ENGINEER TLB Engineers LIGHTING AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEER DjCoalition, Northrop IRRIGATION AND WATER RESOURCE CONSULTANT HydroPlan HYDRAULIC, FIRE AND CIVIL ENGINEER LHO Group QUANTITY SURVEYOR AND COST CONSULTANT MBM TIME SCHEDULE Design, documentation: 6 months Construction: 7 months…

The Landscape Australia Conference began with a lively and impassioned presentation by landscape designer Chang Huai-yan, the director of the Singapore-based practice Salad Dressing. Offering up many dedications to his mentor – the enigmatic, Australian-born, Balinese-practising garden designer Made Wijaya, under whom he studied – Chang took us into the curious relationships of landscape architecture in the Asian tropical context. Chang recounted how elements of Australia and Australiana, from artists Brett Whiteley and John Wolseley to May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, have infused his tropical practice via Wijaya. Illuminating the way in which tropical garden aesthetics respond to a different set of criteria from that of gardens emerging from the Western philosophical tradition, Chang said, “In the West we seek an answer to our questions, while in the East, a…