Location
Legend
Brisbane, Australia
Special
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Planted Water
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Lots Contours
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Submissions
Paths
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B13
Dilute to concentrate Located in the floodplain, much of rocklea/ archerfield is affected by frequent and severe flood events. Key steps are necessary to amend the built environment. The motorway is raised to traverse the floodplain and connect local communities. Above the floodwater, archerfield airfield assumes increased significance as a hub for emergency operations and flood relief. Industry is removed as flooding and population reduction renders commercial activity redundant. Industrial remnants line the motorway providing food storage facilities. In addition, selected blocks are cleared to direct views to landmarks. Five historic phases are revealed to the traveller:
Jonathan Brown
Original landscape: the restored swampland, creek and reinstated ox-bow lake. Pre-1927 european settlement: alluvial pastoral land is reclaimed for farming. Warehouse demolition reveals original stock dams. One of brisbane’s oldest cemetaries is freed of its commercial boundaries. 1927-1939: Air transport. 1940-1945 Wwii: existing flying fortress hangars highlight allied involvement. Post-war: roadside commercial remnants.
2 – Submissions
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B14
“When the Golden Eagle nests in a tree it sometimes makes an enormous pile of branches to which every year it adds another until one day the entire thing falls to pieces under its own weight.” (G. Bachelard) Finding Country offers an opportunity to remember our vulnerability and perhaps our insignificance in the consuming presence of nature, as we reflect upon and reconsider the way we occupy the land. The untouched landscape retains a wealth of knowledge, insight and guidance – it is a book worth reading, a lead worth following, a belief worth sharing. This proposition imagines a built environment that embraces the enduring warmth and delight of the natural environment, while housing, protecting and nurturing a community’s pulse.
Katrina Torresan
Here, spaces for the collective are ephemeral and autochthonous, ...private dwellings are intensely inhabited and occasionally shared, ...a new land value is driven by an economic of means- paring down the essence without shedding the poetry. ...these are my aspirations for Finding Country.
2 – Submissions
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B15
Non-traditional owners not only claim country, they also luxuriate in spreading far and wide. Should these people, whose economy is dependent of continual consumption, really be increasing their reliance on fossil fuels? Mostly the homo economicus has naively generated this way of life and it is now a highly complex situation involving, development for capital gain, urban gentrification, values and ideals. However these are not the problems of the traditional owners.
Andrew Varendorff
The driving question is how can what has been done, be undone to realise the traditional owners of country? How can non-traditional owners arrange themselves spatially on country, which is traditionally not theirs? One idea is to live is in dense mixed-use clusters serviced by public transport. This reduces both the spatial and consumption footprints. However as this land is not terra nullius, to be truly progressive non-traditional owners need to learn from the traditional owners about their country.
2 – Submissions
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B17 Michelle Van Pelt
In post apocalypse Brisbane, the population has been reduced by half. The remaining citizens gather in clusters. Having edged away from the toxic city, the groups now survive in reclaimed neighbourhoods. Battles are fought over resources, streets and houses, with the victorious cluster extending its territory across traditional lot lines and suburb boundaries. Remaining houses are looted for resources and burnt for fuel. Green spaces exist only within neighbourhoods as struggling small leftover gardens. Former shopping centres have been claimed to become new seats of power, while other significant spaces are related to survival, with creek and river edges equally fiercely guarded consequently, these are the only neutral places.
2 – Submissions
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C10
In response to the collapse of the tech-reliant economy, a fear riddled community broke the banks of the river, surrounding themselves with water and isolating themselves in a suburban fortification. Citizens who opted for a life in this self imposed prison hastily brought with them the building materials from their existing built environment. Leaving behind the fertile land to be claimed by the remnant community beyond the walls. Selfish in their attempt to protect themselves from the outside, the community fails to establish its own economy, in turn degenerating into a decaying, shanty slum.
Phillip Nielsen
The naive community falls allowing the natural evolution of a society aware of it’s surrounds. Fear undid what was done to the land and allows for its rehabilitation.
2 – Submissions
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C11
Since colonisation, Fig Tree Pocket has been arbitrarily broken into individual lots for those who seek to ‘live amongst nature’ and ‘own’ a piece of country. But this is no connection to Country.
Tina Tam
When 50% of the population disappears, this gives a chance for Country to be discovered again. The lots are reduced to those along the main ridge access road and on the hill away from floodwaters. They sit on the edge of Country, watching over it, but no longer claiming it. The unruly rainforest flourishes again, yielding native yams, pademelons, black beans and wild figs. The Cubberla creek flows smoothly again, inviting people to gather on its sandy beaches and fish. The natural mound where a Bora Ring was once located, now offers an amphitheatre for spectators to watch sport. The ‘Biambi Yumba Park’ at the tip of the pocket, or the ‘abode of good spirits’, was once the destination for duckhunting. It now serves as a symbolic finish to the road and is a memory of where the significant Fig Tree once stood.
2 – Submissions
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C12
Residents have resurrected the ancient aboriginal utilisation of Oxley Creek as the economic centre, paddling canoes to trade and travel among the other settlement pockets along the creek. It is the only efficient means of travel outside of the immediate locality. This has yielded a perplexing struggle, as the population must reside as close as possible to this key economic enabler, necessary for survival, whilst remaining beyond the reach of waters, which regularly inundate the sprawling flood plain.
Andrew Campbell
Homes occupy the unremarkable Middle Ground. The creek bank and the lofty peaks of the western river edge are no longer inhabited. Now unused infrastructure has eroded into the natural environment. Agricultural land occupies the threshold space between Oxley Creek and the Middle Ground. Queensland houses, once spread across the peninsular, have been uprooted from their spindly foundations to cluster in the middle ground, more than doubling the density of population, which has simultaneously reduced by half in size.
2 – Submissions
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C13 Ashley Paine & Brant Harris
Finding Oxley Creek: Three Landscapes This proposal attempts to find a new balance and interdependence between the suburban, agricultural and natural landscapes surrounding Oxley Creek, by introducing a creek-centric pattern of land use that distributes functions according to the site’s contours. The low flood plains surrounding the creek and its tributaries (up to 5m above sea level) are given over as green space, enabling natural cycles of flooding to slowly regenerate the area to its fertile pre-settlement condition. Residential lots are retained on the highest land (those above the 1974 flood peak of 11m), with housing in the lower areas removed. The remaining area (between 5 and 11m) is designated as agricultural land. Within this zone, the Rocklea Markets creates a nexus between the agricultural and suburban landscapes, and is imagined as the central focus of the area, representing a shift away from the typical retail / business / financial focus of the contemporary city.
2 – Submissions
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C14
In the future, Sub-urban inner city areas will become a juxtaposed use of residential, recreation, community, commercial and industrial. With the development of technology, industrial production will require less space allowing it to remain in the inner city areas and reducing the size of lots.
Christina Na-Heon Cho
Increasing commercial rent, will force businesses out of the CBD diversifying available services in the suburbs. Rising oil prices and increased awareness of carbon emissions will make people re-think their lifestyle. More people will choose to utilise public transport, bicycles and opt to live closer to their place of work. As a result, car dealers will run out of business. The empty car lots on the main road will be turned into small green urban parks. These parks catalyse the need for more strips of communal green spaces (urban farms) that interconnect significant spaces such as schools, community halls, churches and sporting fields while creating physical thresholds between mixed use precincts.
2 – Submissions
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C15 Kirsty Volz & David Toussaint
A Unification Of The Spheres The West has developed a defined separation of the spheres both in time and space. Our lives are carefully divided into work, home, spirituality, family, socialisation, physical activity, sleeping, eating, living and dying. These divisions are reflected in how we structure time and space, a method through which we try to make sense of being. The separation between these spheres has become divorced from experience with the overlay of capitalism, where each sphere is further divided by production and consumption. Rationalization divides our city into suburban housing, industrial land, office blocks, factories, farms and recreation facilities sites separated by rational legal authority and capitalism - creating what Max Weber might have described as the disenchanted city. What if we were to re-conceptualise these spheres? Prioritise a relationship with country over abstract notions of late capitalism through a unification of the spheres. To think of country as a whole defined by the principles of; sites and tracks, plant ecology, animal ecology, habitats, seasons, sky and underground, water places, harvesting and work.
2 – Submissions
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C25
Scenario. Changes to the microclimate, has resulted in parts of the urban environment rendering itself unfeasible under previous planning legislations: 1. Canal estate removed, new harbour made. 2. Industrial space turned to green space. 3. Central spaces reconfigured in blocks.
Eugene Nemesi
4. Density is pushed to the edge.
2 – Submissions
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D11 Snigdha Udatha
The concept of the re-planning scheme of this area, Chapel Hill, to accommodate for the fifty percent decrease in population arose from studying its past history. One half of Chapel Hill represents the Indigenous inhabitants who first settled in the area. Being that the Indigenous people value the earth, and believe landscape features to be an embodiment of their deities, the area of Chapel Hill that is dominated by strong landscape features such as the mountain and river be re-developed to represent this organic nature of the indigenous people. The name for the suburb, as given by the European settler’s in the 1860’s, derives from the location of a Chapel on a hill. This Chapel was initially built for the convenience of the European settlers. In this new scheme, this Chapel forms the heart of one half of Chapel Hill, and its surrounds form a rigid grid, to juxtapose against the organic forms of the ‘Indigenous’ side.
2 – Submissions
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D12
Three sedimentary seams of the redefined city: 1. 10-20m the flatlands / generation seam (farmland, river flats and recreation) 2. 20-30m the city / occupation seam (people‘s country)
Lachlan Nielsen
3. 30-infinity the roof top / observation seam (natural reserve) Seams of a new country... Brisbane... the city is eroded by dividing the suburban composition vertically into three activity seams; generation, occupation and observation... these seams, delineated by the height of the natural topography are not exclusive but rather suggestive to usage and occupation... the seam, which rises from the river to 20M is the generation or farming seam for the city... this seam supplies the city and consolidates the transportation system to local paths... occupation patterns within this seam are dismantled and over time the natural landscape engulfs them... the occupation seam or midlands, is bound between the 20–30M contours….existing occupation patterns within this seam are immaterial and flexible to suit the new cities’ population…..established green areas, significant spaces and roads will break this seam to avoid the formation of an urban hedge...
the existing green areas combined with the farmlands become the greater publics’ backyard and people can wander at will, through lands previously guarded by private ownership... up the hill from the 30m mark the rooftop or observation seam exists as a reserve for all... again, existing occupation patterns are dismantled to allow for natural regeneration and through voids in the boundary, the natural vegetation of the observation seam will seep down the hill allowing for linkages to the farmlands...existing roads throughout the new country are consolidated allowing connection and access between the seams….surplus streets are left to erode and over time these will become paddock tracks and water paths feeding the generation seam... through the process of topographical delineation and controlled urban erosion, occupation seams are allowed to wander and the city is slowly returned to a native country.
2 – Submissions
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D13
Roadway hides. Concrete and bitumen cover country by the hectare. Roadway kills, ‘The Black Strip of Death’, home to legalised WMD’s. Hermetically sealed, mobile boxes driven to and from hermetically sealed residencies or workplaces. How might one experience natural and social surroundings behind a pane of glass in an artificial environment?
David Hanson
Remove it. No roads. Build community. Reinstate the communal street. Reinstate the village and the legs as primary means for personal transport. Commerce is decentralised so decentralise living. Connect to the world of commerce via internet, not hours of motionless traffic.
2 – Submissions
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D14
Closing The Gap
• Green Space
“Country is a relationship that people have with the environment involving an understanding of the time, place and cultural relationships found within a particular area, and the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people of that area.” (Uncle Ernie Grant, as quoted in the Queensland Studies Authority).
Health services, aged care, government administration, places of education, small-scale industry and commerce are relocated to remote locations. Public transport infrastructure is decommissioned. Places of worship and remembrance (cemeteries, war memorials etc) are removed and covered over. The resulting vacant, derelict land is declared ‘Green Space’.
• Finding Understanding
• Water
How might the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities be closed?
Could finding an understanding be an important first step forward?
Blanket resource legislation is introduced to externally govern the access and use of the waterway and adjoining alluvial flood plain. All existing properties and infrastructure are removed from its bounds. Public access and usage is discouraged. Change of government sees lobbying by big industry interests seeking potential development approvals.
• Road
• Significant Space
The original grid pattern overlay is reinstated and non-conforming roads (original paths and tracks that negotiated topography and connected place) are removed.
Places of gathering are confined to public ‘amenities’ that have remained through the above urban adjustments. Typologies include: fast food outlets, convenience stores, service stations and public bars.
Jonathan Kopinski
Might a reflection on the current condition of ‘Country’ itself be useful?
• Lots Those positioned beyond the confines of the reinstated grid are pressured to take up place within its structure.
2 – Submissions
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D15 Kahn Neil & Alex Brown
The Coorparoo/Greenslopes area is imagined as having undergone significant physical and social change. The built environment, reduced to a series of hillside enclaves, retreats from the banks of Norman Creek – reinstating the watercourse’s mangrove ecosystem. This green corridor frames and reinforces the first unfolding of the city ‘ruin’ from the freeway on approach from the south. The enclaves grip the hillside contours, surrounding a central town square space with low-rise, multi-dwelling lots. The once-prevalent single-family, detached houses are no more and a return to multi-generational site occupation is envisaged. The well-manicured private lawns of suburbia are extinct. Instead, community production spaces link the enclaves, providing the population with local produce and shared garden and recreational areas.
2 – Submissions
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D16 Naomi Edson
This ‘piece’ of inner Brisbane is densely populated and quite hilly. Looking at the lot lines as they are, it is evident that the undulating nature of the ground was perhaps overlooked in their setting out; I think to the area’s detriment. I began with an analysis of the topography and located hilltops, possible overland flow paths and places where water may pool naturally. This analysis directly influenced the positioning of ‘significant’ places – to me significant places are public or widely used, whether for gathering, learning or cultural exhibition, and they should therefore occupy the best land, the hilltops, where they simultaneously enjoy views and stand as beacons. I imagined that green space would best occupy overland flow paths, leaving lots of various sizes and functions to weave around the remaining space while following the previously forgotten contours of the land.
2 – Submissions
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If the population was reduced, then perhaps the natural environment could reclaim. Perhaps the existing lots, roads, dwellings would be overthrown, overgrown with vines, seized by tall gum trees, occupied by brush tail possums, creeks and riverbeds reinvigorated. Spreading like a green tributary down the mountain, the population could be, would be confronted with the encroaching wilderness. Not something to be fearful of, but something to acknowledge and encourage. This is a proposition for positive spaces and positive places for the future of Brisbane.
Briohny Mckauge
D17
What if nature took back from us?
2 – Submissions
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E12
Retreat to the hills • Built landscape only occurs at a determined level above sea level • Lower landscape is given to productive crops, recreation & flora/fauna protection; the community is self-sufficent. • Roads follow ridge lines; giving access to breezes and views to all.
Kirstie Galloway
• The heart of the community is at the top of the hill; gazing out over and surveying the lands.
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E13
‘...the relief and design of structures appears more clearly when content, which is the living energy of meaning, is neutralised, somewhat like the architecture of an uninhabited or deserted city, reduced to it’s skeleton by some catastrophe of nature or art. A city no longer inhabited, not simply left behind, but haunted by meaning and culture, this state of being haunted, which keeps the city from returning to nature...’ Jaques Derrida, Writing and Difference
Susan Ellison
In the 1850’s the newcomers to Brisbane contained themselves within an enclosure. A nightfall curfew denied any ‘nuisance’ access. In E15’s 21st century version, a physical barrier retraces those bounding lines. The city within becomes a no [wo] mans’s land, discarded and consumed by it’s own memories. Kurilpa, or Place of the Water Rat, was a neutral hunting ground for the Jagerra and the Turrbal peoples. Once again it becomes common space abundant in its forests of bloodwood, gums and ironbark with staghorns, elkhorns, convolvolus, native orchids, birdlife and fauna. A warren of pathways tracing the landform connects river with apex. Views to no [wo]man’s land act as a reminder. Crossing the river, in Auchenflower, Kurilpa makes it’s presence felt, replacing sprawling suburban blocks with belts of green meandering their way West and on to the Place of the Honey Bee.
2 – Submissions
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E14
Tena koutou katoa: My greetings and acknowledgements to the traditional owners and all. On 13 February 2008 Kevin Rudd fulfilled an election promise to apologise to Indigenous Australians for the stolen generations as the parliament’s first order of business. The apology on behalf of the nation was well received, and most criticisms were of Labor for refusing to provide victims with monetary compensation. Rudd pledged the government to bridging the gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian health, education and living conditions, with changes to the narrow negotiation process in resolving native title issues and transparency in indigenous spending. Source : Wikipedia
Rewi Thompson
Find Country: Without identity ones loses their rights, land and culture. My finding country challenges the Prime Minister’s notion of ‘promise’ and ‘negotiation’ Negotiation: The first negotiations were the ancient ancestors ( creatures) , negotiating the land for food, water, and breeding. Creating hills and valleys, contours, water holes etc. The second negotiations were the traditional owners: also negotiated the land for food, water, shelter etc. Finding country by marking and naming. The arrival of the British negotiated neither. Country confiscated, boundaries, lots, sites, streets, etc ‘marked’ with little acknowledgement of ‘ancient ancestor‘ and ‘traditional owners’. Promise: An opportunity and possibilities for renegotiations. How can two people coexist on the same country?
land as a breathing ‘ancestor’: Principles based on sustainability, conservation, preservation, utilization of natural resources. Second Promise: Recognise/ protect Aborigine sites, resources, values, ‘land rights’. Third Promise: Re negotiate all boundaries, sites, tracks, access etc. Fourth Promise: Creation of settlements based on community /sharing. Higher density - a effective use of country. E16: The river is the ‘lifeblood, spiritual backbone, existence and identity. E16 reflects open country. River Bank: Water holes created as sites. Some are just water, some are occupied for living. Places identifiable by historic reference “ River Rat’, Pelican, Flying fox, Bunya Plains etc. Bush: Sloppy country, negotiate slope , streams and associated vegetation. Sites and tracks are created by following contour. Minimal earthworks and land disturbance Forest: Heavily planted to rejuvenate forest environment. Primarily for rejuvenation of ecology and natural resource that are useable for community: water collection, waste treatment, recreation, research, reduce pollution. Sites are negotiated around these considerations. In summary: A promise is a belief: dreaming, and if Australia believes in Mr Rudd’s promise, then great things can happen.
First Promise: A strategy to rejuvenate / restore 2 – Submissions
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2.1 1.3 MA2
1.2 MA2
1.2 MA2 2.1
2.1
2.1
1.2 MA1
1.2 MA2
1.2 MA2
1.3 MA1 1.2 MA3
1.1
2.1
2.2
2.1
1.2 MA3
1.3 MA3
1.4
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E15 Michael Markham
1 GENERAL
2 FINDING COUNTRY
1.1 DEFINITIONS – SEA LEVEL DATUM SLd SLd @ 2100AD = 0(SL 2009)+(0.09m/1.30m)= +0.88m (approx) 1.2 SINGLE DWELLING PLOTS MA1 - Kangaroo Point via Storey Bridge. (= Municipal Area 1) MA2 - New Farm via Brunswick St. MA3 - Norman Park via Wynnum Road & Stanley Street.
2.1 FIRE LANDSCAPE Demolition of Vulture Street, Wellington Road & Moray Street (curfew zone boundary established 1850) & all associated streets and fronting structures directly adjoined formerly known as MA4 (woolloongbabba).
Rescinding (R) title lots shall be calculated as follows: (a) Apply SLd and determine AHD for To origin. (b) Determine title constant Tc. Refer Aboriginal Heritage Act (Commonwealth of Australia) 2007 – for exempt activities (construction of one or two dwellings on a lot and an extension to those dwellings). Set back 200 from waterway, prior waterway not subject to significant ground disturbance or ancient lake not subject to significant ground disturbance or land within 50m of registered cultural heritage place not subject to sig. ground disturbance. Excerpt - AHC 2007. (c) Calculate cessation of title and heritage protection by single dwellings in the case of waterways. R = To+Tc-SLd annualised.
To be constructed of, but not confined to, bitumen rivers, concrete waterholes, hoop pine forestation & water lilly beds. To be owned through approved cooperative bodies. To be occupied through camping and fire managed by the relevant authority in accordance with AS 3959 & AS 1530. 2.2 GABBA. Interior building fabric retained for sporting tournaments and fighting and preserved under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 2007. Exterior embankment formed from pulverised woolloongabba rubble.
1.3 LEASEHOLD Light industry, agriculture, retail, multiple housing, commercial, demolition/recycling, recreation -(ref dev overlay MA1 MA2 MA3) 1.4 STRADBROKE ISLAND WEST. Shacks. (under provisions of Clause 1.2)
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E16 Elliot Harvie
The process of emptying commenced with the erasure of all post-war housing stock, revealing, in fragments, the pattern of early suburbia as it colonised the ancient landscape. These fragments themselves represent the cultural loss our colony inflicted – the loss of something irretrievable. The lost places, histories and systems of Brisbane’s original inhabitants then begin to avenge themselves on the already revised city, as new landscape weaves and swallows parts of the suburb, yielding spaces both sacred and circulatory. The course of Riding Road, climbing towards colonial-era aboriginal camps at Bulimba, begins to eat into the voids of the city blocks, then reclaims elements of the old subdivisions as gathering places, especially where they stray into the path of the landscaped procession. This reclamation of the subdivisions continues around engorged Norman Creek, once the site of hunting, fishing and camping, and the now smothered peaks at Seven Hills in the west.
2 – Submissions
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E17
Between the Fig and the Norfolk Pine I can see my country. I can see into windows of houses, into back yards; delicate glimpses into strangers’ lives. I count 18 distinguishable colours on roofs, and five masonry houses amongst the timber and tin. From here I read seasons. Spring is Purple with Jacarandas marking exam period, the smell of Mock Orange in the late afternoon and the sound of leaves in the wind. Autumn is gold and brown, with the muddy smell of decomposing leaves. Winter is darker with longer, fuller shadows and a duller sun fading detail of distant balustrades. Summer is bright light piercing soupy air, the houses on the hills are clearer, individual detail is more discernable.
and dialog which taps into a collective intelligence of past lessons, shared imagination, intimate responses and a desire to improve our environments. The standard Lot and the humble fence will give way to communal land – places for casual interaction, shared experiences, communal gardens and agriculture, ply and frequent block parties. Our families will share common lots, and we will engage daily with our elders. Our country will be sensitive to its place, its culture and its function. It will respond, on the deepest level, to the phenomenology of our place.
This place is not like the stone walled Istanbul, or the hill top towns of France, the ancient streets of Rome or the boulevards of Barcelona.
William Ellyett
The country I long to find... Will understand that the soul of our home is defined by the place from which it is born. It will embody the richness of past, of other places and memories which provide depth to its being. Images of places such as my back deck as described above… These places speak of lived experiences, of people past, of history, of music, art and literature which define each of us and which defines our culture. They are important sources of individual and communal identity, and are often profound centres of human existence. Our future country will responds intrinsically to its context, is informed by its place, and is born from uncovering lost layers. It is realised through a process of collaboration 2 – Submissions
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E18 Michael Lineburg
The site is defined by a significant proportion of flat, low-lying marshland – spotted with light-industrial occupation, parklands and intermittent, yet dense, residential communities across the plain. The terrain prescribes the tendency for slow movement towards the river, though through development over time becomes interrupted by scars of manmade infrastructure occurring independent of the lay of the land. It is in the intersection of natural and artificial paths that generates public space, this shared space becoming the apparatus for navigation for the community and restoring patterns of movement that once existed. The population remains at the point of connection between existing high streets and dry land, fostering, as well as strengthening, the relationship of the population to the public green space currently existing. Within this corridor the dead land arising from infrastructure of the prior situation is able to be concentrated, allowing natural vegetation to remain as public territory.
2 – Submissions
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E19 Regina Kaluzny
The built environment is arranged around the natural topography. Roads wind around contours, cutting through only at certain points for connection from one point of access onto the original map to another. The population is clustered around the roads. Beyond the dwelling spaces the nature is left alone as layers of green space and water, again following the contours. The water pools/ doughnut lakes are encouraged so they can feed the green spaces below them. The original river, although it will still flow as it it is given a larger area to flow beyond its banks when it needs to.
2 – Submissions
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E21
The total population of Brisbane has reduced by 50% in accordance with the necessity to co-locate food production with sustainable communities. Significant portions of Brisbane’s suburban landscape have been reclaimed, and in its place a network of productive farming land, continuous habitat and ecological corridors, low lying flood planes and interconnected historic trails and places of cultural significance have emerged or been revealed. The displaced population is densely accommodated in the inner city and satellite urban centres, which have developed as strengthened cultural, social and industry hubs.
Tahnee Sullivan
The city landscape is redefined as a landscape of productivity, community, ecology and culture.
2 – Submissions
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F11
To me finding country is a process. My experience of country has always been a tactile one: climbing riding rolling grinding swimming building breaking bleeding. Against the land then with the land.
Morgan Jenkins
Wilderness is vital in this process and should be preserved, a space that is both inside and outside the city, public and private.
2 – Submissions
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F12
• LOTS Nestle in to her northern banks, the sun warms us in the morning, the storms and bitter winds blow over our heads and water runs away. • ROADS Old paths along ridges have become roads. These paths can stay. • GREEN Land that filters water, wind and sun. Rain flows from the ridges through grasses to the creek. Wind, rain and fire attack this land. We don’t build here! • WATER It gathers, not through storm water drains but across grasses and is clean to feed the valleys and plains before flowing to the river down stream.
James Russell
• SIGNIFICANT Our peaks and banks along the creeks and the journeys between them. The journeys might be down the ridges along the road but I propose all left over land around buildings become significant space. Space to be worked out by the community. We meet on site, the lot owner, the locals and the builder and resolve these spaces between. The threshold and journeys through the community.
2 – Submissions
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F13
Ridgelines are a critical topographic feature of inner city suburbs such as Paddington, defining movement patterns, development and cultural centres. As such, the reading of these ridgelines and specifically structures located on the ridgelines which act as urban markers aid in making legible the spatial understanding of the area.
Zuzana Kovar
Urban markers are isolated buildings which are permitted to breach the height restrictions of the given area to allow for one off monumental type structures, conveying an understanding of the topography. These are strategically placed on critical points on the ridgelines, intersections etc, the location of such structures is to be zoned and governed by the council plan. It is proposed that these structures and development either side of the ridgeline are retained, whilst the resultant valleys are given over to green space.
2 – Submissions
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F14
Finding Economy
Ridiculous, no?
What if the new city stopped expanding? Stopped making itself look nice with shiny seats and crisply cut pavers? Imagine the city, now reduced to 50% of its population restrained to the initial grid that it originally established.
But invert this and it reflects the way Aboriginal communities currently exist in Australia. Economic access to Country is comprehenisvely limited. While welfare dependency maintains a modus operandi enabled by the Left, Right and Lazy. Ideas about land use, planning and architecture are commensurate with this lack of endeavour and leadership.
Kevin O’Brien
In this new way, 500,000 people would be housed in towers with no height limit and a well in the centre of each lot. This and the original pond fed from Spring Hill will be the only forms of fresh water. So the design of the towers and the way the people reticulate waste and energy will be measured against the water quality and therefore the health of the city. All commerce and trade must be generated within the city boundaries. Shortfalls in food will be topped up by Traditional Owners subject to seasonal patterns.
My idea of Finding Country is an economic one derived from cultural relevance. It pursues the values of the radical centre and is unavoidable if we, as a people, and as a nation, are to grow.
No citizen is permitted to move outside the grid. The same grid that kept the Aboriginal people out in the last century shall keep the non-Aboriginal people in. Permission to move outside the grid is at the discretion of the European Protectors (the Aboriginal Elders). Permission can be sought by waiting in the field adjacent the top of the grid. The two fields to the north, will be the preferred camps of the Aboriginal Elders (utmost north), and of the uninitiated (centre north). Non-observance of these protocols is punishable in the first instance by spearing in the leg. Permission can be revised without notice or recourse.
2 – Submissions
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F15
The proposal is to intervene upon the natural cycles of development and occupation of Fortitude Valley and New Farm urban areas. Tenancies, lots and even entire city blocks lay dormant uninhabited - for extended periods of time as social and economic circumstances shift, altering the urban environment, creating new centres of focus whilst drawing attention away from others.
Nick Skepper
With forecast 50% occupancy it is proposed that as these shifts occur, the dormant, unoccupied pockets of urban space be reclaimed as public, green space. This will allow an organic, self editing of the built environment - those areas that become social and economically unsustainable will be absorbed into the new green program. Centres of activity (marked as significant space) and major arterial connections will be consolidated and thus maintain the density that affords them the vitality they currently have. Vast tracts of green will open up between these centres, possibly servicing the area with micro agriculture.
2 – Submissions
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F16
Fact: The population of Brisbane has halved as a result of the global food crisis. By reducing the population by half, mass food production will no longer be required. It is proposed that modern global agricultural practices are overhauled. Agricultural techniques will prioritise soil and water conservation and rehabilitation, sustainable land use practices, energy efficiency and closed loop systems to sustain local communities. To maximise efficiency under this proposed land use system, it will become necessary to amalgamate properties thus redefining property boundaries and land tenure systems. Property economics will have an alternative meaning.
Lucia Wellington
Commercial food retailers will sell more locally produced goods. Consumption patterns will change to support this altered system. Educational institutions become important vessels to carry and share new knowledge about land use, responding to this altered economy that has a focus on sustainable agricultural production and development. Training to fit into the current consumer based economy is no longer the priority in education institutions. Children learn to have an appreciation about the land, its use and history, and the origin, production and distribution of food. People live densely along transport routes. Existing backyards on typical residential sites becomes shared productive and recreational green space. Ridges become public green space. Connections between green spaces are made by transforming existing car streets into pedestrian streets. 2 – Submissions
76
77
F18
The proposition of reducing the habitation of a site unearths opportunities relating to redundancy, and the possibility of appropriating redundant structures according to a new set of uses and requirements. F20 is characterized by manmade structures so large in scale and so permanent that they must be considered part of the landscape. When the significance of the structures is taken away by removing the use, what remains is a terrain that is segmented at a monumental scale. The resulting small population is dwarfed by this over-arching set of divisions and exists on wide and no longer useful access-ways. The way the terrain is occupied is governed by existing economic and planning constraints to a degree. The best sites on the hill are occupied and the less desirable land is assumed as back yards. Agriculture is juxtaposed against abandoned spec-homes, tilt-up sheds and highway embankments.
Nick Flutter
Significant places in the landscape are sparse, inhabiting the pick of the disused industrial buildings and socially significant sites like the Gateway Toll Booth.
2 – Submissions
78
79
F21
Global warming continues altering climates around the globe. Food production falters; hundreds of millions starve. Eventually, inevitably, the Greenland ice shield collapses. Sea levels rise by seven metres within a decade. Coastal settlements are devastated.
Tom Kaye
Sheltered by the bay islands Brisbane is spared much coastal erosion. Communities abandon lowlying land and retreat to the peaks and ridges of our hilly city. Suburbs at the mouth of the river (Lytton and Hemmant) are flooded but the train line is quickly restored above the swamp, a snaking pier of drowned eucalyptus stumps and salvaged steel beams. The densely consolidated towns of Wynnum and Manly thrive as the new breadbaskets of the city: seafood is plentiful in the ecologically rejuvenated Moreton Bay and allotment farming reaps dividends in the rich and rainy bayside soil. Productive green space is scattered along the ridges, the preferred primary access routes, and serves as both teaching and leisure space.
2 – Submissions
80
81
G13 Emma Healy
Once potent at Buyuba were limey, pickled, smoky and organic odours as they arrived swiftly from the south-east. Over worthless grasslands and clayey scrub they travelled almost three miles. Many winds prevail now on the flat terrain where kangaroos and wallabies are farmed. The tannery, saleyards, the dump are gone but the area around the brickstack still occasionally smokes with the scent of narcotic ‘eye-opener’ or frankincense, benzoin, and sandalwood. Maintenance burning displaces colonies of bats. Bunya pines around the old sawmill obscure the Norfolks of the Sedgely Grange driveway. The grasslands are contained by the topography, the edges of the reserves marked by the creeks and hunting nets. Once 5000 white people in this grid now 700 – as in 1900 before the train line came through. They cluster mainly along the New North road. On the ridges wineries and orchards of native quince, guava, quandong and corkwood provide the 700 with their antiseptics, disinfectants, sedatives, hallucinogens and sugar analgesics administered by Native custodians and their trainees.
2 – Submissions
82
83
G14 Michael Martin
The Hill and the Brook Brisbane’s hilly Northern suburbs are an undulating tapestry of leafy suburbs stretching out to the horizon. In the latter decades of the 19th century large swathes of land were sold off in allotments. The resulting cityscape of this time must have more resembled townships, clustered near geographical landmarks, connected by a few main roads and separated by pastureland. This grid presents three major ‘estates’, sold to the public the 1880s. To the south, in what is now the suburb of Windsor, were the Eildon Hill estate, named for the large hill which dominates the area and the smaller Oakwal estate. These portions of land were owned by prestigious gentlemen whose manor houses still stand. To the North, the Gordon Park estate, backs onto the meandering Kedron Brook, whose leafy banks wind through several suburbs before reaching the Brisbane river. Whilst many plots have today been subdivided and streets added and subtracted, the same basic structure remains, and the arteries that crisscrossed the area are now paved main roads.
2 – Submissions
84
85
G15
Rich rainforest dominated the area before being cleared for light industry, such as the Mayne rail yards and Brisbane tuff quarries. Through farming and fishing the area was a primary food bowl until bridges were built where upon industry and freight routes took precedence. Once an alluvial basin, Breakfast Creek and its surrounding suburbs provided fertile soil and a great luxuriance of vegetation. These qualities have been lost over time as the province has amalgamated into another generic suburb. A return to the land’s traditional state is counter productive, however the natural qualities of the area we ignore should be utilised...
Louisa Gee
Consideration of appropriate propagation in relation to soil type; water shedding and catchment; naturally abundant vegetation for use in building, medicinal and food industries; practical use of flood areas that allow an opportunity to return to a natural landscape. How did the traditional caretakers live on the land? Breakfast Creek is the name given to the lower tail of Enoggera Creek. Enoggera being derived from the indigenous word Yowoggera, meaning meeting place. A shared existence is not only necessary as resources diminish, it offers a richer life. Privatisation of land is relaxed. Backyards are amalgamated for sharing resources and responsibilities – vegetable gardens, tool sheds, caring of children, skills sharing – and provides a common space where people can gather.
2 – Submissions
86
87
G16
Larissa Searle
I wish my friends were my neighbours, my neighbours were my family; that fences did not exist, that my backyard was your backyard and that we all looked out for one another. If we all worked together, if we shared our skills and our resources, just think of what the possibilities might be?
2 – Submissions
88
89
G20
• Lost Country
• Spatial Border
Effectively sold to private interests in 2010, the Port of Brisbane eventually mutates into one segment of a globalised ‘Third Nation’ outside of both First and Second Nation control. The border was once a property boundary.
The liminal thickened border allows a certain freedom of negotiation, protest and celebration for and between the border dwellers, the three nations and arrivals from the ocean. The border is porous but choreographed. Berms, canals and forests control border crossings and meeting spaces. Expanses are used to create privacy, sightlines allow surveillance. Charcoal paths are burnt off intermittently in an attempt to absorb cross-contamination.
Claire Humphreys & Robyn Butcher
• Finding Country With the depleted population of the Second Nation occupying the periphery of economic power, the climate for a real biculturalism with the First Nation finally develops. “(I)ssues such as Right to Speak for Country, permission to Cross Border, Traditional Blessings, Entry to Places of Cultural Significance... etc. are paramount in many Aboriginal societies” (http:// dakibudtcha.com.au/Turrbal/index.php/culture/) The new border, the periphery of this new duality, is culturally significant. How this manifests is negotiated. • Reanimated Country
• Learned Country Over time, the recovering land is occupied, learnt and respected. People learn to identify soil toxicity by plant species and air quality by foliage colour. They watch the land change over time. At first the land is unsafe however as the land grows buildings discard layers of mediation. Slowly barriers between flora and fauna are shed.
Reparation required of the Second Nation is repair. Given equivocal status as border territory, yet undesirable to the Third Nation, an ex oil refinery becomes a phytoremediation zone. Dense forests filter the air, whilst hyperaccumulator species clean and restore the soil. Subtle level changes interact with existing structured canal systems, allowing for the natural water table to rise.
2 – Submissions
90
91
H12
Returning to Country Places remaining upon my return: • The house I grew up in. • The creek where my brother and I went yabbying. • The school where I learnt to read. • The park where I first learnt to ride a bike. • The store I got my first paycheck from.
Sam Bowstead
• The hilltop where my family used to watch the New Years fireworks. After the event, the suburban people of Brisbane seem cling to what they once knew in a desperate attempt to find solace in place. The timber buildings have rotted and decayed, with only the newer brick and concrete buildings remaining. Living on the steep hills was unviable and now these areas have become treacherous and roads impassable. Communities gather around solid pieces of infrastructure, gripping to deal with the fact that now the bushland dominates once again. Plenty of space for my kids, however.
2 – Submissions
92
93
H16
This scheme first seeks to restore the natural landscape in the vicinity of the route travelled by the original Aboriginal occupants of the area, the Turrbul Tribe. Strategies employed towards this goal included the removal of the Toombul shopping centre, which in addition to being sited to the disadvantage of the Kedron Brook, is rendered less worthwhile by the reduced population. The gateway motorway cuts through important natural features such as the Kedron Brook, and also impedes on land that is of historical significance to the Turrbul Tribe. Accordingly, it has been removed or redirected from this grid.
Lucy Jeffries
50% of built fabric was removed from the remainder of the grid, mainly to be replaced by green space. These green spaces could be used for recreation, the growing of food and goods and natural reserves for wildlife. Each residential block has been divided into two halves so that residents share a green space. This space could be purely recreational or accommodate a shared produce garden, as in the co-housing model.
2 – Submissions
94
95
I14
Jason Haigh
After a successful referendum to extinguish the existing Torrens title system, Austrlian land has been privatised as a whole and taken over by multicultural conglomerates. Most Australians now have essentially free rent of spacious luxury houses shipped in from Asian factories. A minority has refused to acknowledge the new colonisation of the land and have not been absorbed into the new society that has taken shape with the universal suburban grid. These outsiders consist of many groups including the indigenous, the former homeless, the creative class, anarchists, illegal immigrants and stubborn aristocrats. This group is tolerated in unsanctioned camps on the unwanted land skirting creek banks. Here they live above, amongst the treetops, in structures lovingly crafted from society’s scrap material. Aboriginal land use has been adapted and these watercourses form the territory of a new type of clan group. In keeping with the nation’s spirit of apathy, mainstream Australia and the outsiders live side by side in polite disdain. Life in the creek-based clans is chaotic, communal, cramped, dirty, innovative, intense, complex and entwined with a sense of country. Domesticity within the suburban grid is clean, quiet, spacious, safe, placeless, repressed and mediocre. Illicit interactions occus after dark in a buffer zone set up to keep the clans at a comfortable distance away from the wall of the grid settlement. At intersections between the waterways and the arterial roads, punctures in the sound walls create glimpses between these two Australias.
2 – Submissions
96
97
I17
Despite a halved population... Confidence in the benefits of urban adjacency prevails over the quarter-acre dream. The city diagram is clarified over time by: • neccessities of production • benefits of cohabitation • revealing original patterns of occupation. An intense urbane core including micro-production reaches to consolidated macro-production throughout an agricultural fringe. An underlying network of original movement lines, gathering places and food sources cohere with contemporary mobility, inhabitation and cultivation.
Chris Skinner
Meaning is understood via occupation of the landscape rather than exhibits in the landscape.
2 – Submissions
98