Innehållsförteckning för Issue 149 February från Landscape Architecture Australia

The unique atmosphere of the pier jutting 200 metres into the Baltic Sea in the German resort town of Heiligendamm invites all to stroll along it and stay for a while. Even as twilight fades and dusk sets in, the pier with its scenic lighting continues to draw people. The pier’s inviting atmosphere is the result of a finely tuned lighting concept realised entirely with WE‑EF luminaires. The immediate proximity of the saltwater sea posed the greatest technical challenge in this project, as did the design and static specifications. WE-EF’s answer to severe weather and the aggressive marine climate is its 5CE superior corrosion protection system. In this system, material selection and processing as well as multi-layer coatings ensure reliable protection and a long service life for the luminaires and…

Recipient John Williams Program Master of Landscape Architecture, RMIT University PROJECT STATEMENT The Space In-Between takes a multi-scalar approach to post-industrial reintegration. It uses phytoremediation strategies as a framework to allow a more resilient and diverse urban fabric to accumulate over time. The way that we produce and consume goods is changing. This is resulting in a series of contaminated post-industrial void spaces, which this project recognizes as opportunities for new forms of urban living, new modes of production and new typologies of green infrastructure. The Space In-Between is focused on the highly industrialized suburb of Brooklyn, in Melbourne’s inner west. Brooklyn is a landscape dominated by quarries, landfill and large industrial estates. Lying only ten kilometres from the CBD, these industrial spaces are facing a series of increasing pressures…

Recipient Christopher N. Hunter Program Master of Landscape Architecture, University of Melbourne PROJECT STATEMENT Anthropogenic global warming has a varied and unpredictable impact, but one thing is now virtually certain: elevating ocean temperatures are fuelling sea level rise and intensifying storm activity. There is a growing push for coastal cities to respond to storm surge with hard infrastructure, which sprawls along its edges and has a detrimental impact on the environment of the intertidal zone. This coastal armouring is underpinned by the belief that it will be possible to hold out the sea indefinitely, and enters into a battle to keep nature out. San Francisco is an example of an estuarine city that is considering an escalation of coastal defences. Withdraw – Diffuse – Reclaim explores the potential for urban…

Scott Hawken explores how promising initial designs for Barangaroo’s headland park were compromised, posing questions about authenticity but citing the botanically expansive plantings as a standout feature. TEXT SCOTT HAWKEN Sydney Harbour’s headlands are some of the most enchanting elements of its urban landscape. The new Barangaroo Reserve is located on one of the most central – the headland adjacent to where Sydney Harbour Bridge meets Dawes Point. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the headland was progressively obliterated to make way for industrial development until there was little left except for a vast concrete hardstand wharf. Despite this modernization, the lack of rail and road connections made the site uncompetitive. The lack of competitive infrastructure and various industrial disputes resulted in shipping leases for the site not being renewed.…

Team members Brinlee Pickering, Clare O’Brien, Grace Hunt and Michele Williams, University of New South Wales PROJECT OVERVIEW The Bays Precinct is eighty hectares of land located two kilometres to the west of Sydney CBD. Development of the precinct will contribute significantly to Sydney city’s economic, social and cultural growth. Switching Gears proposes an urban masterplan characterized by acceptance of existing industrial workings, remnant features and dramatically altered natural conditions. The masterplan also celebrates the site’s layered past, which is of particular importance in the design of three distinct public spaces within the site: Power Station Square, the Silo Light Rail Stop and the Glebe Island Apron. Switching Gears’ vision for the Bays Precinct is a place where the engines of society are in motion around you, where you can…

SYDNEY’S BARANGAROO RESERVE WINS WAN AWARD The recently opened Barangaroo Reserve has won the 2015 World Architecture News Waterfront Award for the re-creation of a headland adjacent to the suburb of Millers Point. The collaborative project, by US practice PWP Landscape Architecture and Australian practice Johnson Pilton Walker Architects and Landscape Architects, was up against five other projects from around the world. The headland reserve is one of three precincts that make up Barangaroo, a reclaimed container port directly west of Sydney’s CBD. WAN jury member Bryan Avery commented that the project “slips effortlessly into the landscape.” To read more about Barangaroo Reserve see two reviews of the project on page 40. Photo: Bruce Mackenzie WORLDARCHITECTURENEWS.COM PUBLIC 2016 – PERTH’S FESTIVAL OF URBAN ART AND IDEAS Launched in 2014, Public…

Recipient Aili Hardner Program Bachelor of Design (Honours, Landscape Architecture), Queensland University of Technology PROJECT STATEMENT Oklahoma State is in the heart of North America’s Tornado Alley. Each year, on average, more than 1,200 tornadoes strike in the US, with severe tornadoes killing and injuring many people and costing billions of dollars in damages. Tornado Alley’s low-income communities are stuck in a chronic cycle of substandard rebuilding, often leaving them even more vulnerable to the next tornado. This design proposal takes a critical approach to the problem and presents an alternative treatment of the built environment, the landscape structure and community disturbance responses. A key innovation is the manipulation of largescale landscape texture and surface roughness (for example, irrigated agriculture and forestry) as a means to decrease vulnerability to wind…

Recipient Sue McDougall Program Bachelor of Design (Landscape Architecture, Honours), University of Western Australia PROJECT STATEMENT The aim of this project is to analyse, assess and visualize the extent of the effects of the State Planning Policy 3.7 – Planning for Bushfire Risk Management on the Shire of Mundaring, thirty-five kilometres east of Perth. The project identifies effects of the SPP 3.7 on biodiversity, environmental assets and landscape ecology, including through a case study interrogation over various scales. It also visualizes potential spatial implications for the future, if practices continue as they are now, and proposes solutions in order to bring all stakeholders together to understand the long-term implications of SPP 3.7. The Office of Bushfire Risk Management is preparing a state bushfire-prone area map that, when released, will underpin…

The Goods Line, Sydney, New South Wales — Aspect Studios and CHROFI The Goods Line urban renewal project has seen a disused rail corridor reimagined as an elevated park that runs through the heart of Sydney’s most densely populated area. The site began its European history in 1855 as the key access for Australia’s first railway to the port at Darling Harbour. Freight moved through this narrow corridor until 1984, when the last train made its way past the Ultimo Power Station, which was by then vacant (now the Powerhouse Museum). Following decades of disuse, The Goods Line was then reconsidered as the main component of the Ultimo Pedestrian Network. This proposal not only linked Surry Hills with Ultimo and an array of civic institutions but also ensured future access…

Team members Alex Prujean, Kathryn Nguyen and Michael Cook, Victoria University of Wellington PROJECT OVERVIEW People tend to move in circles. Where these circles intersect are where opportunities for inclusive public spaces emerge. These are spaces that aren’t just for kids playing in the sand or a businessperson looking for a good coffee, but for everyone – for the man without a home, for the teenagers loitering on the corner, for the watchful elderly couple. Spaces that are truly for all. But what happens in the event of a disaster? What good are these inclusive spaces if they fail to move with the hand of Mother Nature? Are they rendered obsolete or can they be adapted to serve other purposes? New Zealand is prone to earthquakes. Aftershock proposes a network…

Team members Christine Blunden, Sian Du and Tama Whiting, Victoria University of Wellington PROJECT OVERVIEW Urban Streaming is a landscape design project located in the suburb of Te Aro, Wellington, New Zealand. The design seeks to connect people to place by revealing parts of a historic stream that flows under the city and out into the harbour. A coherent design language uses water as an element to connect people of the city and enhance their social interaction. The design forms a string of pocketed landscapes that follow the path of the stream, utilizing adjacent areas as new public space. The collection of public spaces would allow a variety of activities that cater to the local community and urban infrastructure. Daylight would be introduced to the underground stream in areas where…

The impact of climate change on our cities no longer lies in the realm of future predictions. As the realities of climate change become increasingly evident, attention has turned to mediation strategies focused on reducing the urban heat island effect. Increased urban density, heat production from cars, airconditioning, vegetation removal, increased impermeable surfaces and air pollution all contribute to the urban heat island effect. Guidelines for mediating the warming of our cities encourage the construction of green infrastructure in the form of green roofs and green walls, increased vegetation and the adoption of reflective and light-coloured surfaces for roofs and paving. Emerging research, however, suggests that these highly generalized recommendations may not achieve the desired outcome. A 2015 article in Nature highlights that in some cases rooftop plantings may actually…

Recipient Allison Sainty Program Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, University of New South Wales PROJECT STATEMENT Industrial structures are often seen as being less worthy of heritage status than other buildings, despite the fact that industry was critical to the development of Sydney and Australia’s thriving wheat trade of the 1900s, particularly Glebe Island – a former major port facility. Forgotten Industry, Future Form is a project enriched by its industrial past, incorporating buildings and structures into the design of a new urban centre. Taking cues from the full range of Glebe Island’s history, this project aims to answer the question: “How can a site’s past inform a new future for a place?” The adaptation of the existing silos into a gallery and library takes centrestage, and its landmark status is…

Recipient Marguerite Bartolo Program Master of Landscape Architecture, The University of Adelaide PROJECT STATEMENT The Wastescape project investigates permissible metaphors of “waste” in the landscape, as discussed by author and academic Mira Engler. The site for this investigation, Garden Island in Port Adelaide, is a former landfill fringed by significant mangrove ecologies and the adjacent Torrens Island Power Station. Using the warm waste water from Torrens Island Power Station, Garden Island would be transformed into an outdoor spa experience that retains and enhances important existing ecological and historical elements, including a dolphin sanctuary and nursery, a mangrove forest and a shipwreck experience. As the hot water enters the site it would make its way through the landscape in two separate paths. The first would go through a series of cooling…

Recipient Jennifer Dearnaley Program Master of Landscape Architecture, Deakin University PROJECT STATEMENT The site of Yollinko Park in Victoria is where the Wada wurrung balug clan of the Wadawurrung tribe (also called the Wathaurong tribe) of the Kulin nation lived, prior to European colonization of the Geelong region in 1827. At the confluence of Kardinia Creek and Barwon River, the site offered food in abundance and shelter from cold winds. In 1981, 780 artefacts (including axes, anvils, spear heads, blades, stone tools and three middens) were discovered on this site, dating back five thousand years. This project aims to remember and respect local Indigenous history. Yollinko Park, opened in 1992, today does not achieve its original design intent of being a place of education, and has become a place that…

Ian Potter Sculpture Court, MUMA, Melbourne — Kerstin Thompson Architects, Simon Ellis Landscape Architects and Fiona Harrisson The Ian Potter Sculpture Court, nestled in the arc of the redesigned and refurbished Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in Melbourne’s Caulfield, is both sculpture garden and part of the public realm of the campus. Completed several years ago by Kerstin Thompson Architects, Simon Ellis Landscape Architects and Fiona Harrisson, the courtyard received an urban design award from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects in 2011. Now, the courtyard has settled and the plantings matured, which makes this an interesting moment to revisit the design as well as the collaborative partnership that produced it. When briefed to review the MUMA forecourt, it was the nature of the collaboration that particularly interested me,…

The inaugural Festival of Landscape Architecture in 2014 set an exciting new tone for the profession’s annual get-together. In 2015 I attended the second festival, This Public Life, amid much speculation as to whether it could be as richly satisfying as the first. The creative directors – Cameron Bruhn, Claire Martin and Ricky Ricardo – are to be congratulated for crafting something different, yet equally wonderful. Over eleven days, with more than thirty events and installations, the idea of a “festival” was realized to its full potential. Opening the festival’s Research Summit at the University of Melbourne, Gini Lee set the intellectual frame for both the summit and the conference to follow, citing Alan Pert’s notion that the rigour we bring to our work is more important than distinctions between…