How a space unfolds into a place is a mystery. What ingredients are required to make our cities valued? We go about our daily lives and the things we touch and feel remind us of who we are and where we belong. For most of us the things we care about are actually small and […]
Read moreThe marketplace is clearly failing the landscapes and the towns we live in. Australian country towns are dying as the global economy seeks to extract the cheapest goods in the cheapest location. We live in a very large island with a small population and with inbuilt inefficiencies of distance and time to markets. Our standard […]
Read moreEco-retrofitting the landscape begins with acknowledgement that sites always have existing cultural and ecological frameworks.
Read moreThe Strand Ephemera 5The Strand, Townsville Townsville’s main promenade, The Strand, was once again the setting for the biennial Strand Ephemera, an exhibition of temporal works of public art. On balmy clear nights we found many people exploring the parklands, looking for the twenty-two artworks which were spread out over the 2.2 km beachfront parklands. […]
Read moreAbstract Public Art up until the 1950s was predominantly focused on monuments, free standing sculptures and frieze/surface works on prominent buildings. Since then it has developed into a much broader range of creative interventions in the city and in the landscape. This talk will discuss emerging concepts and challenges related to the making of contemporary […]
Read moreAustralia has ridden on the back of mining booms which have reinvigorated regional towns like Gladstone in Queensland. The gold mining boom in the 1880’s left Australia with an urban fabric which is probably the best quality Civic architecture left in our cities. Local entrepreneurs invested into their town and built long-lasting stone and timber […]
Read moreContext Gladstone has been a City of extremely accelerated development in times past, and it is likely this rate of development will happen again. It has some remarkable natural attributes including a deep harbour and substantial mineral resources, which will continue to provide enormous economic potential for the region, however these assets need to be […]
Read moreEdith Street ‘hums’ on a Saturday morning with the bustle of shopping and street chatting. This festive moment lasts for a few hours and is exactly the kind of ambience and energy which needs to flow into other parts of the town and into the evening. New civic spaces have now been created to assist […]
Read moreHervey Bay is one of the fastest growing regions outside the capital cities, buoyed by the migration to the sun coast of the elderly, and by the sea-change affecting peoples desire to live with more amenity. Places like Hervey Bay however, do not have the level of planning, design and development sophistication available in the […]
Read moreThe public realm is a complex place: a slippery cultural construct. It is shaped over time by many intentions, mostly non-design related. How can landscape architects become meaningful players in this shaping process? How can our public spaces become cultural realms? ‘Projects’ are design and construction vehicles used to solve perceived public realm problems. They […]
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