Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 167 August 2020 i Landscape Architecture Australia

Sun protection quality Playground shade sails at schools, early learning centres and council parks should always provide the highest level of sun protection. Z16 shade cloth by Rainbow Shade can block up to 99 percent of UV radiation, making it the perfect shade cloth choice for protecting children and students. Vibrant and durable With exceptional UV block and a 10-year warranty, Z16 shade cloth provides outstanding protection and longevity, making it ideal for commercial shade sail installations. Z16 shade fabric comes in 24 designer colours and is capable of transforming any park or playground into a vibrant outdoor learning environment. Comprehensively tested Z16 shade structure fabric has been comprehensively tested for UV block, hail resistance, fire behaviour, strength, wind force and fade resistance and has obtained compliance with the following…

South Perth Foreshore South Perth, Western Australia Built on the land of the Noongar people Place Laboratory In his seminal 1977 book The Fall of Public Man, urban sociologist Richard Sennett made a powerful argument for a more formal public culture while critiquing what he viewed as an increasingly indulgent individualism. In the decades since, city planning and the designers of the public domain have echoed Sennett’s advocacy for the public spaces of civil society by using design to activate, program, market and wholly embrace public gathering spaces. Now, the COVID-19 global pandemic has changed our public and private lives profoundly. As we return to a “new normal,” it is with greatly altered interests that we inhabit and value our public realm. Mindeerup (a traditional Noongar name meaning “place of…

For a little over a decade, Oral McGuire has been working with Greening Australia and Yaraguia Enterprises, a group of Ballardong Nyungar people, to regenerate hundreds of hectares of land in south-west Western Australia using traditional knowledge systems and land management practices. As part of this work, the Marlak Niran Revegetation Project, at Avondale Park near Beverley, aims to create a Ballardong cultural landscape for future generations. Rosie Halsmith spoke with McGuire. Rosie Halsmith — Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Oral McGuire — My name’s Oral McGuire. I’m a Ballardong and Whadjuk Nyungar. I’m a Nyungar person who sees and understands our cultural responsibilities. Through my bloodline, I have strong connections with the lands of the Ballardong people [in the south-west of Western Australia], which extend out…

Always an admirer of the Renaissance sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini and curious about his practice, I watched with interest recently a video describing just how he produced perhaps his most famous sculpture, Apollo and Daphne, siting it in a particular room in the Villa Borghese in Rome. Watching and listening, I was struck by the essential aspects of Bernini’s practice that still align with work in the creative fields. He knew his material, selecting his marble blocks from the quarry at Carrara. He knew his site, designing the piece precisely in relation to its space, to be experienced as part of a sequence he choreographed. Before sculpting, he drew and drew and drew to the point where, presumably, he “knew” the piece before it was made, not only in his…

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced massive changes on almost every workplace across the country and has wreaked unprecedented damage on the Australian economy, with experts in mid-May predicting the largest budget deficit in history and unemployment tipped to soar to 10 percent in the June quarter – the highest rate since the recession of the early 1990s.1 Australia’s $38 billion per year tertiary education sector2 was certainly not immune to these difficulties; in fact, even among the carnage, it stands out as a sector that – despite structural vulnerability to international crises and global economic shocks – was woefully unprepared to weather the Covid storm. Peak body Universities Australia has projected a loss of revenue between A$3 billion and A$4.6 billion this year, with more than 21,000 jobs at risk…

Prahran Square Prahran, Victoria Built on the land of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation Aspect Studios Prompted by a media flurry focused on unhappy traders, I visited Prahran Square on a mild and sunny late afternoon in February. The complaints were reminiscent of early moments in the life of Federation Square: certain expectations about public space weren’t being met (where were the trees and grass?) and many were prepared to condemn the new space before it had time to embed in our collective cultural psyche. But less than a generation after these criticisms were levelled at Federation Square, attempts to re-work a small part of it were furiously and successfully opposed by hundreds of thousands of Melburnians. My curiosity was piqued. What qualities of this…

What role do residential landscapes play in the context of the climate emergency, population growth and the housing affordability crisis? And how are landscape architects pushing boundaries in their design approaches, for both traditional and emerging residential typologies? As Melbourne’s population booms, the city’s residential landscape continues to expand and transform through processes of infill and sprawl. Melbourne has become the fourth least affordable housing market globally – behind Sydney at third – and, in the context of the climate crisis, resourceintensive landscape conventions such as lawns and green walls come into question. How is our profession responding to these changing contexts? Here, four Melbourne designers explore new design approaches for the city’s varied residential landscapes: private gardens, landscapes for social housing communities, multi-residential infill landscapes and landscape-driven urban precincts.…

CHARLES DARWIN UNI PRECINCT Charles Darwin University (CDU) has unveiled plans for an eight-storey education and community precinct by ARM Architecture with TCL as landscape architects. TCL has designed three different concepts for the landscape, with the preferred option featuring a green entry threshold to CDU along Cavanagh Street with garden beds and integrated seating underneath a dense tree canopy. In this proposal, the site’s existing heritage-listed Boab tree would be flanked by a shaded communal lawn with an Indigenous ceremonial area located within a clearing adjacent to the tree. Image: courtesy ARM Architecture armarchitecture.com.au | tcl.net.au SUNSHINE COAST DESIGN GUIDE Sunshine Coast Council has produced a new design guide in the form of a hardcover book that aims to show “how good design is vital to protecting what the…

COVID-19 has swept across the globe like a hurricane, causing worldwide disruption as populations shelter from its invisible eye. In the eerie quiet of our cities, streets and open spaces have become the pressure valve to relieve the physical and mental stresses of social isolation. The pandemic has been a reminder of the essential service provided by public space, and a catalyst for highlighting where it needs repairing. Pandemics have marked the urban landscape. As outbreaks of cholera ravaged communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, large parts of cities were reshaped for the provision of clean air and water. Frederick Law Olmsted – whose first son died of cholera – promoted New York’s Central Park to become the “lungs of the city.” In Philadelphia, development was cleared from the…

Over 30 years, brothers Rob and Tim Buruma have planted close to a million trees through their secondgeneration commercial landscaping practice. But five years ago, on a windswept site in the western suburbs of Melbourne, frustration gave way to innovation. Realizing that age-old practices needed to change to benefit both trees and the industry, the Burumas sought to develop a new all-in-one system that would enable new tree plantings to reach their full potential. The Burumas recognized that in order to grow strong trees with excellent root development and welldeveloped trunks, flexible staking and controlled water delivery would be key. Tree Coach, an Australian-made product from the Burumas’ company Natural Growth Partners (NGP), is the result of five years of rigorous design and experimentation. Tree Coach aims to streamline the…

Hassett Park Campbell, Australian Capital Territory Built on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture When Hassett Park opened in 2015 it was championed for meeting the ACT government’s environmental, social and spatial objectives. Designed by Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture (JILA) as a public park within the larger prestige estate development of Campbell 5, it is the physical manifestation of public open space policy that has evolved in the ACT over more than a century. However, in the context of the COVID-19 lockdowns and their impacts on public life and social interactions, how can the design of the park be understood within this evolution? Parks and gardens are embedded in the fabric of Canberra. They were listed as requirements in the 1911 design competition for…

Openwork is a landscape architecture practice that has evolved by moving beyond convention. Founding member Mark Jacques frames the studio’s approach as a conscious destabilization of a project’s agreed or orthodox scope. “By deploying an oppositional argument early on in the design process, we try to put a project outside of an expected condition,” he says. It is these acts of subversion that are hinted at in the practice’s name; by pushing the limits of a project’s scope, the studio opens up new and unexpected possibilities. Founded in Melbourne in 2016, Openwork is fast becoming known for its portfolio of small-footprint public projects that generate effects not through imposition but through inversion. “RMIT gave us an income, so there was an opportunity to jump off and take a risk,” reflects…