Landscape Eco-retrofitting
Eco-retrofitting the landscape begins with acknowledgement that sites always have existing cultural and ecological frameworks.
Read moreEnvironmental Design and Landscape Planning
Tropical boulevard transforms Innisfail
Edith 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 […]
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The world’s most sustainable small subdivision
South-East Queensland is rapidly morphing into a continuous fabric of suburban development. Interstate migration and the call of the sun are sustaining housing booms on the edges of Gold Coast City. Landmatters Pty Ltd in collaboration with John Mongard Landscape Architects set out to `build a project that inspires and sets a world’s best standard […]
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Sustainable communities or urban sprawl?
Hervey 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 […]
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Networks Not Lines: Toward a long term cultural realm in the landscape architectural project
The 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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Green Villages – Tooradin as a model for growth
Traditionally, Melbourne’s development has pushed out indiscriminately into the surrounding rural landscape. As a result, local ecologies have been compromised and natural systems disrupted. Tooradin is a village strategically located at the only place where the South Gippsland Highway meets the waters of Western Port. The Village is located 65 kilometres south east of central […]
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Suburban Entropy and the Death of Difference (Finding a green way through the Greenfields)
The forces of change in our society are increasingly globalised and franchised. Investment, trade and even the way we relate to each other in our living places are being shaped by patterns and pressures which are beyond our view. As we continue with the rapid expansion of our cities, long-term fault-lines are being built into […]
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The Future Of Water Sensitive Streets & Places: The Landscape Elements of WSUD
The vast amount of water caught every day within our streets, car parks and footpaths is an unrecognised resource going to waste. In a country facing increasing pressure on its dwindling water resources, we should be recycling and harvesting these lost waters of our urban systems. In the town centre of Toowoomba we calculated once […]
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Where is the collective landscape
Landscape character in the public realm is hard to define. Vaness Berry, Kim Calio, Megan Lawler and John Mongard ask how do you plan for a collective character, when it is an amalgam of perceptions, values and feelings carried around by communities of diverse people? 1.4 MB PDF
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