Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 175 August 2022 i Landscape Architecture Australia

To the casual visitor, a trip to the South Bank precinct is a visit to the heart of Brisbane and the best that life in Queensland offers. The lush, shady gardens and groves, the sunny lawns that overlook the CBD and the Brisbane River, the vivid bougainvillea-clad Grand Arbour that snakes along its length, the sounds of birds – all are memorable. Within walking distance of the CBD, one can dine or snack al fresco, swim in turquoise lagoons, meet friends and colleagues and connect with the city’s cultural life. The Convention Centre and cinemas, the Cultural Precinct with its theatres, concert halls, museum and galleries, and Griffith University’s art school and conservatorium of music are all either on site or within walking distance. So too are hospitals, hotels, offices,…

A fundamental wonder of landscape, time engenders the cycles of life; growth and decay; light and dark; interconnectedness; patience and dedication. As landscape architects, the subject of our work is living, growing, and evolving. We rely on time for our projects to reach their potential, but we are often restricted by short project programs, profit-driven practice models and static performance requirements. If we are to design for the future, then we need to consider – and reconsider – how we can incorporate time into our relationships with place and community, in how we structure and plan for our engagements with site, and in how we engage with processes of experimentation and learning. Issues with current practice Contemporary professional landscape practice suffers from the legacy of decades spent conforming to other…

Humanity faces an urgent challenge to redesign our communities, including buildings, neighbourhoods, parks and infrastructure, to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts. How can we develop novel responses situated within the here and now, that anticipate and reinforce viable mid-term and long-term strategic outcomes? Two projects I have worked on recently might provide some insight. The first was developed through Yale University’s Urban Ecology and Design Laboratory (UEDLAB), working with my former PhD student Timothy Terway as part of the Southeastern Connecticut Regional Framework for Coastal Resilience. The Nature Conservancy was the client and the project worked across towns in Connecticut, including Stratford. The second example is the Design with Country studio which I co-taught in 2021 with Jefa Greenaway (Wailwan/Kamilaroi) and Kirstine Wallis (Palawa), two Indigenous staff at…

Time is experienced differently and understood in myriad ways by different cultural knowledge systems. My name is Kaylie Salvatori. I am a Yuin Budawang woman and Director of COLA Studio, living and working in Gundungurra – Dharug Country. Though my thoughts and experiences are likely shared by many Indigenous people, unless otherwise stated, the thoughts presented here are my own perspectives as an Indigenous woman living in contemporary Australia and are not intended to speak for Indigenous people as a whole. I am thankful to my Ancestors, Elders and mentors for guiding me through my journey and hope to do my part in giving back to community and Country. I think we may be a part of a long, long lesson: civilization. The exercise of human dominion over nature –…

The year was 1982. The town of North Fremantle was in the process of turning from an industrial port town into ’80s suburbia. A book by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher questioning material wealth’s impact on human culture and happiness was gaining in popularity. In response, a group of academics from Murdoch University leased a five-acre property to demonstrate techniques for sustainable living and alternative technology along the Bilya (Swan River). A rammed earth building, solar panels, wind turbine and recycling centre were built on the property with the construction process framed as an educational course. The project, located on the land of the Whadjuk people of Noongar Country, was one of the first alternative energy sites in Western Australia and was named Appropriate Community and Education. Known today…

Matthew Gandy is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure and biodiversity. His books include Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination and, most recently, Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space. He is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Kings College at the University of Cambridge. Julian Raxworthy – You’ve got a bit of a following in landscape architecture. We are in a time where geography has become important, and the discipline is prominent in landscape architecture discourse where people are now “looking at the overlooked.” Why are we interested in these spaces and systems that, previously, we were either trying to disguise or even actively avoid [like urban wastelands with…

Gondwana Link is a landscape restoration project that protects and reconnects habitat across 1,000 kilometres in Western Australia’s south-west. This region, classified as a global biodiversity hotspot, is home to an ancient ecology with more than 7,200 vascular plant species, 80 percent of them endemic.1 While rich in biodiversity, the area has suffered the drastic impacts of land clearing for agriculture, with only 30 percent of primary native vegetation remaining.2 In this context of opportunity and of loss, Gondwana Link offers an approach to broad-scale repair. While conventional techniques focus on the regeneration of isolated remnant patches, this project provides a framework for social and ecological restoration at a landscape scale: a statewide corridor that crosses boundaries and bioregions. The complex and wide-ranging networks spanning these landscapes are drawn together…

The Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden (AALBG) combines the natural arid zone ecosystems of the local area of Port Augusta with constructed garden ecologies from diverse arid zone ecosystems across Australia.1 The garden unfolds through a loose network of curvilinear paths that invite visitors to experience a mosaic of local and regional arid plant communities. Much like the arid lands of this continent, the AALBG deserves to be more widely known and celebrated, as both a pioneering work of arid zone planting design and a remarkable story of community-driven landscape architecture. First conceived of as an idea in 1981, the garden has been sending down roots since its construction in 1989. The year 1996 marked the opening of the garden to the public. While not the first or only arid…

Balls Head juts south into Sydney Harbour from the sleepy lower-north-shore suburb of Waverton. The body of the headland is formed of the city’s ur-material of weeping sandstone, its stony armature cloaked beneath an impressive canopy until it tumbles exposed and unbroken to the waterline. Balls Head Reserve occupies the peninsula’s southernmost tip, where the area’s thin waist opens to a wider headland: a shape, if you were a winged thing, resembling a hammer or a mallet. Ordinary tools, but capable of imposing surprising force. The reserve is made conspicuous by contrast with its neighbours. Across Balls Head Bay to the east stands Blues Point Tower, symbol of Seidler’s ultimately rejected plans for a modernist utopia. Diagonally opposite lies Balls Head Reserve’s “sister” headland, Barangaroo Reserve, re-moulded to reference an…