Innehållsförteckning för Issue 150 May från Landscape Architecture Australia

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL PLAZA The South Australian government has unveiled plans to redevelop the Adelaide Festival Plaza with a design prepared by ARM Architecture and Taylor Cullity Lethlean. The $220 million overhaul of the underused plaza aims to reactivate the space by creating a new, single-level outdoor square. The plaza will wrap around the Adelaide Festival Centre (also to undergo an upgrade, designed by Hassell), connecting it to the River Torrens foreshore. Construction on the new plaza is set to commence in mid-2016. RIVERBANK.SA.GOV.AU GREVILLE AND KING STREETS IMPROVEMENT PLAN Rush\Wright Associates recently completed designs for the City of Stonnington’s Greville and King Streets Improvement Plan. The project includes a series of street and public realm improvements for Greville and King Streets and Grattan Gardens in Prahran, Victoria. The first stage…

Typically, for landscape architects, the term “landscape” brings to mind a swirling gallery of definitions. These definitions – collected over time, project after project – add to our mental library, shaping the way we define the term that defines our profession. From high-profile park-lands to bespoke residential gardens, “landscape” has come to refer to clearly defined pockets of outdoor space in which we are engaged to create useable, functional and aesthetically pleasing designs. But what about the ancient, wild landscapes of the remainder of the continent we call home? What of the landscapes that are unbounded, untamed, undefined? The landscapes that do not need us to manipulate, push and pull at them, creating levels, layers, making our mark. Is there a role for landscape architects as stewards of this wide…

Tonsley, Adelaide, South Australia — Oxigen The first thing you usually hear about Tonsley is how big it is. Part business park, part higher education campus, at an overall sixty-one hectares it is indeed quite large, but not a particularly extensive example of either of these landscape types nor of post-industrial sites in general. Of course, the retained eight-hectare roof of the Mitsubishi Motors Main Assembly Building (MAB) is an unmissable structure and so architects perhaps feel things are oversized. What is mightily impressive about this project is less its physical footprint than its relatively unusual and ambitious mix of programs and generous development timeframe, as well as a detailed, documented commitment to distinctive design quality throughout. The masterplan for the twenty-year redevelopment of Tonsley was approved by State Cabinet…

Melbourne has a high number of level crossings compared to other cities in Australia, and they’re a major cause of road congestion and danger to pedestrians. Removal of these crossings is a high priority for the Victorian Government, which plans to remove fifty of the most dangerous level crossings in Melbourne over the next eight years, with at least twenty removals by 2018. The level crossing at Burke Road, Glen Eris was recently removed, with the rail line lowered below the road, and other removals are currently under design or construction. Designs for the nine level crossing removals between Caulfield and Dandenong, on the Cranbourne–Pakenham line, feature elevated sections of rail and the transformation of “Melbourne’s busiest rail corridor into public open space.” While generally there is community support for…

Sydney Park Water Re-use Project, Sydney, New South Wales — Turf Design Studio and Environmental Partnership Ever since I can remember I’ve been mesmerized by the behaviour of water, particularly stormwater and floodwater. I enjoy walking in my neighbourhood after a significant down-pour to see the effects the rain has had on the urban landscape. I’m always excited to find points where drainage infrastructure has been overwhelmed and ephemeral streams and ponds emerge – not because I like seeing things fail, but because I appreciate the presence of something that the bulk of our urban infrastructure is designed to conceal, to hide below the surface in pipes and drains and expel out to sea as fast as possible. In this sense, I was lucky to visit Sydney Park’s new water…

Monash University Earth Sciences Garden, Melbourne, Victoria — Rush\Wright Associates The recently completed Monash University Earth Sciences Garden by Rush\Wright Associates, for the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at the university’s Clayton Campus, was inspired by the geology and geomorphology of Victoria. Developed in close collaboration with earth scientists, it provides a direct method for learning about geology, physical geography and atmospheric sciences. “The earth sciences textbook is brought to life by this dynamic outdoor classroom, which offers a practical approach to learning field measurement and mapping techniques, and rock and mineral recognition skills,” Professor Sandy Cruden says. It includes more than five hundred stone specimens in a 30-by-120-metre site that is tightly bounded by university buildings including Lyons’ Green Chemical Futures, which complements and literally reflects the garden…

Monash University Caulfield Campus Green, Melbourne, Victoria – Taylor Cullity Lethlean Creative collaboration is rife on the recently completed one-hectare Monash University Caulfield Campus Green in Melbourne. Most noticeably, the Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL) landscape masterplan incorporates Agatha Gothe-Snape’s large utilitarian artwork, The Scheme was a Blueprint for Future Development Programs (2015); the Sound Shell performance space by Mesne Design Studio with whole-of-project involvement by architecture students at Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA) and the University of Kassel, Germany; and a water sensitive urban design feature by environmental consultant DesignFlow. The Green also displays the continued successful partnership of TCL and Paul Thompson in creating landscapes featuring ecotypic mass plantings of Australian natives. TCL’s landscape design has established connectivity between the surrounding campus buildings and transport hubs while providing…

The Lower Mekong Basin is a gasping, swelling river system comprising two hundred ecoregions and a hundred different ethnic groups within a dual monsoonal climate. In An Giang and Kiên Giang, Vietnamese rice farming provinces near the border of Cambodia, a complex array of hydroclimates, multiple sub basins, varied drainage patterns and tidal fluctuations drive the region’s aquatic and agricultural seasons. Forecasting from the International Centre for Environmental Management predicts that these shifting dynamics will promote excessive flood duration and increased salinity and brackish water throughout the land region by 2050, interfering with regular farming crop reliance. Residents here, however, have adopted strategies for flexibility within their agriculture portfolio, developed in the 1960s.1 They exhibit adapted farming methods during seasonal variances in floods and droughts. These methods include integration of…

Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time. – Hannah Arendt (Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess, 1958) It goes without question. Many North American landscape architects who have landed on our shores have had an extensive impact on both the theoretical and practical application of the profession. Many of these now classroom names helped shape the discourse surrounding landscape architecture within Australia. However, of late there has been somewhat of a “contraflow” – an under-current of Australian landscape architects emerging within the North American tableau. On my recent secondment to the US, I managed to sit down with three of these characters:…