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May we not be nimble and not be quick as if we are not careful we might be burnt by the candle stick This book is a reflection of an educational journey our class took into the contempary landscapes surrounding, and influencing us as Landscape Architects. Unknowingly lead into the layers of infrastructure, indigenity, environmentalism, sustainability and public space we discovered an underlying network of parameters that we as landscape architects will be challenged with. We decided that great designers are collaborators that push methods and break routines. In our rush to solve ecological imbalance we need to slow down and think infrastructurely and evolve our designs ecologically. No design comes without consequences and as we engage on projects that change the face of our planet we must keep our senses in tune to the delicate nature of our surroundings.
We wish to thank Matthew Bradbury for facilitating us on our journey of discovery.
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Group number: 1 Team members: Doyle Eccleshall, Logan Autagavaia, Knher Santos, Aynnezele Lomboy Topic: Publicness Name of Site visit: St Patrick Square Name of Project seminar: Piazza Gae Aulenti Name of Historical site: St Peter’s Square Name of Theory seminar: the impossible project of public space Group number: 2 Team members: Nick, Reuben, Georgina, Vivian, Tvina Topic: Infrastructure Name of Site visit: Northern bus way Akoranga Name of Project seminar: Noosa Juction-bus station Name of Historical site: Back bay fens Name of Theory seminar: Landscape/ infrastructure Group number: 3 Team members: Kate Steiner, Alex Luiten, James Brabant, Bonnie, Daisy Topic: Sustainability Name of Site visit: Daldy st Name of Project seminar: Jack Evans Boat Harbour Name of Historical site: Parc Bos Name of Theory seminar: Large Parks: Ecological design or Designer Ecology Group number: 4 Team members: Summit Singh, Yamen, Sharon, Michael, Li Topic: Environment Name of Site visit: La Rosa Garden Name of Project seminar: Cheongye cheon Name of Historical site: Emerald necklace Name of Theory seminar: The plight Group number: 5 Team members: Ofa, Chantelle, Glenn, Phoebe, Adeeba Title of the book: Everything is a concrete jungle Topic: Indigeneity Name of Site visit: Aotea Square Name of Project seminar: Lartelare Name of Historical site: Auckland Domain Name of Theory seminar: Landscape Simulation
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Public space is a necessity for any city to develop, because without public space there would be no space for many things. We group has denfined publicness as everything. Everything is a “public space� roads are a public space, parks, square, a place where citizens gather, where events happen, space for relaxing. Landscape Architects use public space to help people engage with their suroundings.
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Publicness SITE VISIT
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St. Patrick’s Square St Patrick Square
Boffa Miskell
Landscape Designer: John Potter
John Potter, Landscape architect, Associate Partner of Boffa Miskell. Orginally from the UK joined Boffa Miskell in 2001. John plays a major part in Auckland city’s CBD upgrade. His area’s of expertise; Master planning; Impletementation; Consulation and stakeholder enagement makes him the perfect canidate to be part of the team developing Auckland’s Streetscape. (Boffa Miskell- Consultants , 2013)
Client: Auckland City Council Date of Design and Construction: Designed in 2006 to mid 2007 and construction from 2007 to late 2009.
John has also been involved with the development of: -Elliot and Darby Street Upgrade -Federal Street and Sky Tower Plaza Redevelopement -Kirsten School Campus Master Plan -Massey Park Upgrade (Boffa Miskell- Consultants , 2013)
Budget: A budget of 7.2 million was set. After high quality materials were quoted, it was increased to 9.2 million. 1.672.72 per m2 Sub Contractors: JFC ltd Pavers: Designsource Lights: Lighting Design Partnerships (LDP) Trees: Specimen Tree Company Length of pathways: 141.30m Total area: 5’213 m2
52.13% of a Hectare (without Cathedral land) appx.
Total area of grass: 778 m2 appx. Size of seated area: 138 m Awards: -George Malcolm Supreme Award -2010 NZILA Resene Pride of Place Award The Square has also reached top 6 in World Architecture News. Figure 1. John Potter (Boffa Miskell, 2013)
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St. Patrick’s Square
Figure 2. St. Patrick’s Square plan (Boffa Miskell, 2008) 7
St. Patrick’s Square
Urban Space:
Publicness
St. Patrick Square is an urban public space. Urban design is the process of designing and shaping the cities, towns or villages. Urban design is about making connections between people and places, movement and urban form. St Patrick square is a perfect case in point, the focal point is the eponymous St Patrick’s Cathedral at the southern end which is surrounded by stately paving. The northern end forms a series of grassy steps with a water feature and great sculptures. It’s a favoured lunchtime spot for the office workers in the area, as well as the groups of students at the nearby language schools, so it’s always colourful and full of people during the day. At night the water features glow a cool neon blue. The concept for the design of the upgraded square is derived from the site’s historical context, touching on metaphorical ideas of pilgrimage, light & dark, and sanctuary. Activity and transitional routes have been moved to the edges of the square, maximising passive space. The gradual terracing of this space, combined with the backdrop of the Cathedral, provides for a feeling of both prospect and protection, creating a feeling of comfort and versatility. The way in which people respond to a space is a sure sign of its success or failure within the city - in the case of St Patrick’s square, its popularity speaks volumes. A town square is an open public space normally found in the heart of a traditional town used for gathering, it is also an open area at the meeting of two or more streets. . Therefore St. Patrick is a square because it is situated at the heart of European settled New Zealand (19th century). The square is located between Albert, Hobson, Swanson and Wyndham Streets, gently descending down a north-facing ridgeline of Auckland’s undulating topography. It is the only important area of green open space from mid-town to the waterfront, making it a vital source of break against the surrounding urban fabric.
St Patrick’s Square is used as a shortcut, quite retreat and communal space for corperate workers, labour’s and tourist. The factors that make it so public are its location, it is situated near two of Aucklands most popular roads (Hobson and Queen street) making it very acessible for visitors. Being a ‘Square’ it is open to the public, St Patrick’s Square also sits along Ferderal Square which originally linked up around the Cathedral. Majority of visitors during lunch are Corperate workers that need fresh air from their office jobs, Tourists again due to its location and view of the sky tower.
Figure 3. St. Patrick’s Square (Craig, 2012)
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St. Patrick’s Square Garden Square A garden square is defined as an open space with buildings surrounding it, much like a typical square although to make the space more desirable it is now quite common for designers to put landscape features in the square such as grass, trees and other plants. (Bowen, 2014). We believe that St Patrick’s Square is a modern day garden square due to having grass in a square. Vegetation: St Patrick’s Square is a special place in Auckland’s city central. The various vegetation are planted this site, which provide a quite an environment to the boisterous city. Most landscape designer would agree plants play a significant role in a garden or square. The palette of plants chosen and displayed help create a sense of place for people, as well as beautifying and enhancing the landscape design of public space is a process the selection of plants chosen. And it has to connect to the surrounding site conditions (Sandra Batley, 2008). Although, these plants are used to frame the Cathedral, they show different function. For example, big trees provide shade, and some shrubs can as screen to separate the building with the square. In same case, seasonal colours have to be focused. -Tree’s and Lawn It is well known that the lawn is one of the basic elements of landscape designs, because linking together all the other planting trees, shrubs, flowers into a harmonies whole. However, a beautiful lawn has an emotional appeal that can be translated into spiritual comforts. Hence, the lawn typically offers peace and serenity, and an escape from the glare and hard surfaces of sidewalks.
Figure 4. ST PATRICKS SQUARE, AUCKLAND CB (Dewhirst, 2013)
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St. Patrick’s Square Anz Tower: The ANZ Centre is an extensive scale re-vamp that tried to fundamentally enhance a general public space encompassing the ANZ tower. Region Properties needed the general population square to keep up and mirror the nature of the contiguous open domain (St Patrick’s Square). The test was conveying the project inside the tight time spans. Boffa Miskell were brought on board at an early stage to help with the re-outline of the court at the base of the tower, bordering Swanson Street and Federal Street. Their award winning project certainly influenced the outcome, says Scene Draftsman Cathy Challinor. “There was a definite intention to visually connect the two and create the feel of a single space,” says Challinor. Challinor includes that the effortlessness of the final result misrepresents the unpredictability of the outline and specialized difficulties on the venture –referring to the fact that the square is situated on top of a current car park rooftop structure, and the configuration needed to work inside limitations of the platform rooftop structure, existing and new building carpet levels and passages, and the encompassing open trail system. (Boffa Miskell-ANZ Centre,2013)
Figure 5. ANZ CENTRE, AUCKLAND (2013)
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St. Patrick’s Square Artwork: Steve Woodward and Mary –Lousie Brown were involved with the design process their roll was to create two permant artworks for the site. Steve Woodward created a piece called ‘Step touch’ and Mary-Louise brown created the wording for the bird bath water feature. Step touch is made from Shanxi black granite (China), This replicates two stair cases layered on each other. It was sculpted by Steve Woodward in October of 2009 for the St Patrick’s Square. Mary-Louise Brown came up with the quote ‘But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’ Which was engraved on the edgings of a bird bath centered between the catherdral and the large water feature. The quote refers to St. Julian of Norcock whom originally said the quote.
Figure 7. St Patrick Square (2015)
Figure 6. Mary-Louise Browne (2009) 11
St. Patrick’s Square
History:
The land provided the site for the first Catholic Church in Auckland and the first cathedral church in New Zealand. It is home to the catholic diocese’s St Patrick’s Cathedral and dates back to 1841 when the land was granted to Bishop Pompallier (New Zealand’s first catholic bishop) to build a church and cemetery. In 1848 as Auckland’s populations started to grow in numbers. The small wooden St Patrick church was too small and that made the Auckland council to commission a permanent design that to hold the future church to be built on. The architect Walter Robertson decided to have the site built with stone. Years later the church was renovated again but now in bricks (1884) to fit the growing population of Auckland’s faithful believers. Today, it creates a welcome area for break from the hustle and bustle of life in the city. In 1975 Auckland City Council closed the current road and car park adjacent to the Cathedral and in doing so created the original St. Patrick’s Square. The Cathedral was restored in 2007 by the Catholic Diocese, presenting the Council with the following opportunity to considerably enhance the square and compliment this significant heritage feature.
Figure 8. St Patricks square (Matt, 2013)
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St. Patrick’s Square Water:
Site Issues:
The element of water would be the most beautiful and peaceful part in St Patrick’s Square. It is built through the terraced feature, and some patchwork flat pools with steps make water tumbling between them. Material choice provided a strong relation with the church further strengthening its connection with the Square. The spatial arrangement provided spatial variance for all users from retreating smokers to lunching workers to visiting mums (St Patrick’s Square, 2010).
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Square has become quite renown for its $20 million dollar overhaul, Auckland City Council had spent a lot of money on St Patrick’s Square re-vamping as a part of the CBD street upgrade. It was clear that once the site was completed it would require some level of Maintaince to upkeep the look and to ensure everything is in working order. On site there are a few trees that drop leaf litter, this leaf litter gets clogged in drains and clogs up the water features. The is also a large amount of rubbish left over from lunch time which ends up over flowing and getting scattered around the site also getting cached in bzoth water features. The grass, was picked for its durability, look and comfort. Over summer the Automatic irrigation system had been turned off due to a shortage of water and the up coming sports seasons, this lead to the grass turning into a ‘dust bowl’ and covered in weeds. Auckland Council has changed the contractors looking after the site to lower costs and ensure its being taken care of. The site was designed with grass for numerous reasons and both Boffa Miskell and Auckland City council were on a understandment that it will be taken care of otherwise it would not have been placed there. We believe that because it is such a new development and alot of money invested in such a small peice of land, it hasthe reasoning to have priotity and a higher level of maintainence to what is being provided (Orsman, 2015)
Water is a multidimensional object which appears in various fields. For example, environmentally it is a natural resource essential for living, socially it appears as a sensitive basis for developing human activities, and aesthetically it is represented as a beauty element of nature (Koskina, N. Hasanagas, 2013). The important designs characteristics of the water are including its movement, sound, and reflection. Moreover, water also provides an interesting recreational area for people.
Figure 9. Public Indecendiary (Spencer, 2010)
Figure 10. The New Zealand Hearld (Orsman, 2015) 13
St. Patrick’s Square
Plant’s on Site Botanical Name sophora tetraptera
tecomanthe speciosa
metrosideros excelsa
pyrus calleryana ‘chanticleer’
acer buergeianum
quercus palustris
Common Name Kowhai
Three kings vine
Pohutukawa
Callery pear
Trident maple
Pin oak
Charactoristics Upright tree developing open habit. Large golden flowers massed in spring (Allan, H.H, 1961) A vigorous evergreen climber from Three kings islands, with large glossy green leaves and large creamy white tubular flowers in winter. (Allan, H.H, 1961) Deciduous tree up to 25 metres high, dome likeform, when the pohutukawa id in bloom with red flower. (De Lange, Heenan, Norton, Rolfe, & Sawyer, 2010) Deciduous trees or shrubs with oval leaves and scented white flowers in spring followed by green or brown fruits, edible in some species. (“Pyrus calleryana, 2015”) Deciduious, upright, round-headed tree. Graceful and dense in apperance. Leaves tun to red, orange, yellow.(“Acer Buergerianum,” 2000)
Images
Figure 1. Kowhai (2013)
Figure 2. New Zealand Native Flowers, climbers and ground plants (2014)
Figure 3. New Zealand and It’s Native Magic (2014)
Figure 4. Bradford Callery Pear (2015)
Figure 5. Maple Tree (2011)
Deciduious tree, The leaves are 5-7 bristle-tipped teeth, flowering and leaf-out occur in late spring.(“Pin Oak,” 2014) Figure 6. Quercus palustris (2009)
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St. Patrick’s Square
Figure 11. St Patricks Square (Devitt, 2013)
Jura grey/ beige borders and key stones with veccario finish & basalt triangular inserts with flamed finish [P01]
Figure 12. St Patricks Square (Devitt, 2013)
Jura grey / beige pavers with veccario finish [P02]
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Figure 13. (Google Maps, 2014)
Basalt pavers with flamed finish [P03]
BIBLIOGRAPHY TEXT Acer Buergerianum. (2000). Retrieved from http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/ go/56754/#b Allan, H.H. (1961). Flora of New Zealand. Vol. I. Wellington, Government Printer. Boffa Miskell. (2013). ANZ Centre-Project’s-Boffa Miskell. Retrieved April 07, 2015, from Boffa Miskell: http://www.boffamiskell.co.nz/project.php?v=anz-centre Boffa Miskell (2013). Urban oasis restored. Retrieved from http://www.boffamiskell. co.nz/project.php?v=st-patricks-square. Candan Kus Sahin. (2013). Lawns and Ground Covers in Landscape Design. Retrieved from: http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/45439.pdf De Lange, P.J.; Heenan, P.B.; Norton, D.A.; Rolfe, J.R.; Sawyer, J.W.D. 2010:Threatened Plants of New Zealand. Christchurch, Canterbury University Press.(De Lange, Heenan, Norton, Rolfe, & Sawyer, 2010)
Pyrus calleryana. (2015). Retrieved March 21 2015, from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrus_calleryana Rein Jocelyn, (15 August 2008). Fancy paving to stay. 1st ed. ARC Serial 072 A8. Sandra Batley. (2008). THE ROLE OF PLANTS IN THE LANDSCAPE. Retrieved May 17, 2008 from: http://blog.landscapedesign.co.nz/healthy-living-lifestyle/the-roleof-plantsin-the-landscape/archives/86/ Stevens, P(2010-2012). Bite 28: Mary- Louise Browne-Font, 2009. Retrieved from: http://realitybitesartblog.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/bite-28-mary-louise-brownfont-2009.html. Urban oasis restored. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.boffamiskell.co.nz/project. php?v=st-patricks-square.
Erikson Alanah May , (28 August 2008). $8.9 m spuce- up for city haven . 1st ed. ARC Mircrofilm : Koskina, N. Hasanagas. (2013).The water element as aesthetic factor in landscape design. Retrieved from: http://www.uab.ro/geocad/upload/33_318_Paper4_RevCAD14_2013.pdf Kowhai. (2012). Retrieved June 3, 2015, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/K%C5%8Dwhai Orsman, B. (2015, Feburary 19). New Zealand Hearld. Retrieved March 24,2015, from -NZ Herald, Super City: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_ id=1&objectid=11404334 Pin Oak. (2014). Retrieved from http://naturewatch.org.nz/taxa/54785-Quercus-palustris
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Images Figure 1. Boffa Miskell. (2013). John Potter. Retrieved from: http://www.boffamiskell.co.nz/consultant.php?v=john-potter
Figure 11. Devitt, S. (2015). St Patricks Square. Retrieved from http://www.simondevitt. com/?gallery=st-patricks-square
Figure 2. Boffa MIskell. (2008). St Patrick’s square plan.
Figure12. Devitt, S. (2015). St Patricks Square. Retrieved from http://www.simondevitt. com/?gallery=st-patricks-square
Figure3. Craig. (2012). St. Patrick square. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ craigsyd/7101276539/
Figure 13. Google Maps. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@36.846206,174.763415,3a,48.9y,14.5h,79.98t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sgbFVsxNcsIgyMCpDBm6tng!2e0!6m1!1e1
Figure 4. Dewhirst, D. (2013). ST PATRICKS SQUARE, AUCKLAND CB. Retrieved from http:// www.metrogreen.co.nz/projects/st-patricks-sq
Vegetation Images
Figure 5. ANZ CENTRE, AUCKLAND. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.officefocus. co.nz/4108883/
Figure1. Kowhai. (2013). Retrieved from http://meaningoftrees.com/tag/kowhai/ Figure2. New Zealand Native Flowers, climbers and ground plants. (2014) Retrieved from http:// whangareiflora.weebly.com/n-z-flowers.html
Figure 6. Mary-Louise Browne. (2009). Retrieved from http://realitybitesartblog.blogspot. co.nz/2011/01/bite-28-mary-louise-brown-font-2009.html
Figure 3. New Zealand and It’s Native Magic. (2014). Retrieved from https://atrailoftravels.files. wordpress.com/2014/04/dscf0634.jpg
Figure 7. St Patrick Square. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.aucklanddesignmanual.co.nz/project-type/parks/hub/civic-space/guidance/enjoy/design-for-comfort-and-safety
Figure 4. Bradford Callery Pear. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.easybloom.com/plantlibrary/ plant/bradford-callery-pear-1
Figure 8. Matt, L. (2013). St Patricks Square. Retrieved from http://transportblog. co.nz/2013/10/18/photo-of-the-day-st-patricks-square/
Figure 5. Maple Tree. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Maple-Tree.gif
Figure9. Spencer, D. (2010). Public Indecendiary. Retrieved from http://publicindecendiary.blogspot.co.nz/2010/07/st-patricks-square.html
Figure 6. Quercus palustris .(2009). Retrieved from http://www.torbaytreefarmers.com.au/tree-info.php?tree_id=70
Figure 10. Orsman, B. (2015, Feburary 19). The New Zealand Hearld. Retrieved March 24,2015, from -NZ Herald, Super City: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11404334 17
Publicness PROJECT SEMINAR
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PIAZZA GAE AULENTI
Designer: LAND & AECOM Client: Hines Italia SGR Location: Italy, Lombardy, Milan Date: 2008-2011 Grand opening December 2012 Budget: Appx € 20’000 per square meter. ($ 30’000) total estimate: 69 Million Dollars. Size: 80 meters in diameter, 2,300 square meters(0.23 ha) 6 meters above street level Materials: Luverne stone, Granite porphyry and slate
Introductionw Piazza Gae Aulenti is located in zone 9 of Milan. Milan hosted Expo 2015 this is a universal exposition and tackles numerous problems that the world faces now and in the mere future. The theme which was picked for 2015 was “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” . It also helps show the world what the city has to offer as Milan offers such a wide range of contempary infrastructure it was a great opportunity to host Expo 2015. With the new development of Unicredits skyscraper (the tallest in Milan), Expo 2015 and the late passing of Gae Aulenti it was important to build a site that reflected all of these well (Pelli Clarke Pelli, 2008) The site costed approximatley 69 million dollars it is part of the Porta Nuova Garibaldi UniCredit towers, the development as a whole totalts in 1.4 million square feet, Compared to the piazza which is only 2300 the development is quite large. The new Piazza helps to link the builings to their surroundings.
AECOM AECOM is one of the leading companies behind today’s infrastructure. They design, build and finance their projects, they are listed number #322 out of 500 on the fortune 500 and operate in approximately 150 different countries and employ 100 000 people. They are ranked #1 in international design and many other categories. (Streeter, 2014)
LAND LAND is a design practice firm for landscape architecture, it was establish in 1990’s by Andréa’s Kipar and Giovanni Sala. 2007 LAND has developed there team By establishing LAND MILANO, LAND Sardegna and LAND Roma and also collaboration with a team from KIPAR-LAND-SCARFTS-CARCHITEKTEN and a Duiis-berh based studio, they have been operating in Italy and Germany since then. (LAND s.r.l Milano, 2011)
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PIAZZA GAE AULENTI
Figure 1.Google Inc (2015) 20
PIAZZA GAE AULENTI
Figure 2. Google Inc (2015) 21
PIAZZA GAE AULENTI Water Features
Figure 3. Virgallito (2014) In the middle of the corso como there is a piece called which has picked up the name “Bench Sculpture”. It resembles grass blades, at the tops of these there is a low light system which lights up the seating and the center of the piazza. (Virgallito, 2014)
Figure 5. Williamson (2013) Oringinally these holes were ponds but were opened up to penetrate to the lower levels. This was because it was necessary to aerate the lower levels (especially car park) in an environmentally friendly way. The ‘pond’ as a whole is roughly 60 meters in diameter inside this pond are three ovals that measure 13 x 17.75 meters each, also a shallow plond with coloured LED lighting and water fixtures in it and this measure 36 by 24 meters (Google Inc, 2015) a raised pathway protrudes through the surface of the pond connecting points of desire to make the journey easier this also helps people to interact with the site as it is a thoroughfare for workers and pedestrians providing easier access to the surrounding buildings.
Figure 4. Williamson (2013) ‘The brass of Garutti’ These were located at the entrance from corso como, The brass trumpets are all linked together, if you speak through one of them and find the right one you can here what is being said like a string phone. This art piece also helps to link the lower level with the ground floor (globetrotter-travels, 2015) 22
PIAZZA GAE AULENTI Circulation Pattern This is a diagram of how we thing the site functions, The roads play a major part in this. They surround the site, from anyacess point you woild have to cross or come from a road to get on site this then moves to the builings, again, whilst walking into the square you would either go through an openeing in the building or between two buildings, there is the an axes connecting the two sides together. this axes has been extruded through the water. If you continue on you will pass through the same jouney but in reserve and be back outside again.
Figure 6. Garofalo (14) The construction started in mid 2008 through to late 2011, The Piazza’s offical grand opening was on December 2012. It was one of the last stages in the massive master plan. The Union Credit Tower and the underground retail shops an car park all had to get completed in different stages. This meant they could not start on the piazza its self untill everything surrounding it was completed (Williamson, 2013)
Figure 7. Garofalo (14) Figure 8. Logan (2015) 23
PIAZZA GAE AULENTI
Dimensions The tower Unicredit, has 32 floors and is 231 meters high, standing as the highest building Italian (the building has about 146 meters, more than 85 of the spire. (Pelli Clarke Pelli, 2008) These are the different entrences, Corso Como is the most popular you get most foot traffic coming through this enterance as that is already an area that is quite popular and has more destenations. Heading towards Centro Direionale you have plans for a new development, this will be link to the site as the modern also if you keep heading out there you have the Milano Centrale with is the Metro centre and the entrance to the railways that go underneath the site. Garibaldi Isola you have the exit for the railway system, and varesine takes you towards the centre of Porta Nuova. (globetrotter-travels, 2015)
Figure 9. Google Inc (2015) 24
PIAZZA GAE AULENTI Milan Zones
Similarities between St Patrick’s and Piazza Gae Aulenti:
Zones are a form of de-centralization, this is a process pf re-deistbution or dispersing funcntions, power,poeple or things away from the central location which would have been zone 1 in Milan’s case and they have futher spread this to 8 more zones around the city, think of this like hunger games, different factions for different functions. In zone 9 where Piazza Gae Aulenti is located, The zone is predoninatly older architecutre containg highrise buildings of about 5-13 floors. Although since the late 1950’s there has been development to build skyscrapers for office blocks and residential building’s. It is also getting enw developemtns through it helping it to become a modern eco-friendly zone as the focus is becoming our environment and future.
-Both are in a City. -Both can/are used as a short cut. -Both have very expesive materials to create a more luxury feel. Difference between St Patricks and Piazza Gae Aulenti: -The Piazza Gae Aulenti is surrounded by private buildings -St Patrick’s is open and not enclosed by any buildings -The Piazza Gae Aulenti is more public event friendly, where St Patrick’s square has grass and different elevations -St Patrick’s has a sloped site -The Piazza Gae Aulenti is flat
Figure 10. Google Inc (2015)
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Publicness HISTORICAL SEMINAR
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St. Peter’s Square Project name: St Peter’s Square Commissioned by: Pope Alexander XII Designer: Gian Lorenzo Bernini Date: Designed: 1656 Completed: 1667 Vegetation: None Materials: Marble Location: Vetican City Dimension: 240m wide, 196 m long, (787x643 ft) E to W: 380m, N to S: 240m (5.8 Hectares) Functions: The connection between the Popes and the masses and its incredible architecture.
Figure 11. Vatican St.Peter Square (2005) 27
St. Peter’s Square
Gian Lorenzo Bernini Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples on Dec. 7, 1598. He was an Italian architect and sculptor and a painter. He was trained as a sculptor by his father, Pietro. Bernini served eight different popes in his lifetime and contributed to a number of landmarks in Rome during the 17th century, including St. Peter’s Basilica and the Fountain of the Four Rivers. Bernini’s sculptures are recognizable for their engaging drama, tension, texture, and naturalism. GianLorenzo Bernini attracted attention due to his well-developed artistic talent at such a young age, and attended a masterclass, where he produced a number of busts including one of the Pope. Bernini died at age 81 on November 28th 1680 and when he died he was widely considered not only Europe’s greatest artist but also one of its greatest men.
Figure 12. Giovanni Bernini (2015) 28
St. Peter’s Square
Figure 13. The Station Churches of Advent (Dipippo, 2011) 29
St. Peter’s Square
Figure 14. St. Peter’s square (2015)
Figure 16. St. Peter’s square (2015)
Figure 15. St. Peter’s square (2015)
St. Peter square The entrance of the site the visitor would be welcomed by: -The Obelisk (imported by Emperor Augustus from Alexandria 37 AD) (25.5m) (tall red granite) , it was moved to the center of the site by Domenico Fontana 1585 and 2 grand fountains were built by Carlo Moderno 1613(right) and the second one designed by Carlo Fontana (left) 1677. This was designed in a “Boroque” style which is about making it beautiful symmetrical and perfect. The Elliptical space gently slopes down towards the center (obelisk) to drain rain water. In the site there are 284 columns around the Piazza, which are in rows of 4, there are 88 Pilasters and 140 Statues of saints sculpted by Bernini’s students which surrounds the site from above.
St. Peters Basilica St. Peter’s Basilica began on 18 April 1506 and completed at 18 November 1626, It was collectively designed by Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno and Bernini. This is one of the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture in the world. Burial site of the first Pope: St Peter. The interior is vast – 186 metres (610ft) long, with a capacity for around 60,000 people. On the right, as you walk in, is Michelangelo’s Pietà, an inspiration to beholders ever since the sculptor finished it in 1500, at the age of 25. At the end of the nave is the bronze statue of St Peter, its toe worn away by the kisses of pilgrims.
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St. Peter’s Square
Circulation Pattern
Similarities (Between St Patrick Square and St Peter’s Square) -Both Destination/ Termination -Religious (Church) -Both elevated to show importance -Public access/Open area -Expensive Materials and exported materials
Norwich described it in a way “ that the greatest number of people could see the pope give blessings, either from the middle of the façade of the church of from the window of in the Vatican Palace” (Norwich 1975 p 175). In the entrance of the site the visitor would be welcomed by: 1.The Obelisk (imported by Emperor Augustus from Alexandria 37 AD) 2.(25.5m) (tall red granite) 3.This was moved to the center of the site by Domenico Fontana 1585 4. 2 grand fountains were built by Carlo Moderno 1613(right) and the second one designed by Carlo Fontana (left) 1677 5.Visitors would have two options either to walk around through the shelter where the colonnades lie or through the exposed cobble stone paved square. 6.Visitors would gather in front of the Basilica often for mass every Sundays 7.Around the obelisk Tourist would go to admire the grandness of the Church.
Differences (Between St Patrick Square and St Peter’s Square) -Different Materials- St. Patrick(Basalt), St. Peter’s (marble) -Sizes: St. Patrick- 0.5 Hectares, St.Peter-5.8 Hectares, Piazza Gae Aulenti- 0.23 Hectares -Different shapes- St. Peter’s square is an ellipse shape and St. Patrick has a square shape. -St. Patrick’ square is built in Gothic style buildings and St. Peter’s square is classical antiquity(colonnades) -St. Peter square is used for Gathering and Events, St. Patrick square is used for lunch area. -St. Peter’s square has no GRASS or Vegetation, where as St. Patrick does
Figure 17. Google Earth (1997) Figure 18. St Patrik Square (Matt, 2013)
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Figure 19. St Peter’s Square (Waller, 2014)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TEXT Williamson, R. (2013, May 31). Piazza Gar Aulenti / AECOM. Retrieved from ArchDaily: http://www.archidaily.com/?p=379624
Giovanni Bernini. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved from http://www. biography.com/people/giovanni-bernini-9210094. Globetrotter-travels. (2015, April 13). Tye new skyline of Milano. Retrieved from Globetrotter: http://globetrotter-blog.com/tye-new-skyline-of-milan/ LAND s.r.l Milano. (2011, February 28). Porta Nuova-Garibldi. Retrieved from LAND-srl: http://www.landsrl.com/project/66/ Marelli, d. C. (2012, December 10). Porta Nuova: omaggio a Gae Aulenti. Retrieved from progettare: http://www.progettarearchitettura.it/omaggio-a-gae-aulenti-ambasciatricePegano, M. (2015). Piazza Gae Aulenti. Un po’ di Berlino a Milano. Le foto. Retrived from http://milano.mentelocale.it/53713-milano-piazza-gae-aulenti-po-berlino-sotto-madonnina-foto/ Pelli Clarke Pelli. (2008, June 18). Porta Nuova Garibaldi. Retrieved from PCPARCH: http://www.pcparch.com/projects/porta-nuova Streeter, J. H. (2014, August 14). Harnessingthe edge effect. Retrieved from AECOM-BLOGS: blogs.aecom.com/connectedcities/harnessing-the-edge-effect/ Saint Peter’s Square 3D. (2013). Retrieved from http://vatican.com/tour/saint_peter_ square_3D# St. Peter’s Square. (2007). Retrieved from http://www.vaticanstate.va/content/vaticanstate/en/monumenti/basilica-di-s-pietro/la-piazza.html St Peter’s Square, the Vatican and Prati. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.insightguides.com/destinations/europe/italy/central-italy/rome/city-areas/the-vatican-and-prati
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Images Figure 1. Google Inc. (2015). Google Earth. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/earth/ download/ge/agree.html
Figure 11. Vatican St.Peter Square. (2005). Retrieved June 3 2015, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_sites#/media/File:Vatican_StPeter_Square.jpg
Figure 2. Google Inc. (2015). Google Earth. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/earth/ download/ge/agree.html
Figure 12. Giovanni Bernini. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/giovanni-bernini-9210094.
Figure 3. Virgallito, G. (2014, July 10). Flickr-Gaetanovirgalltio. Retrieved June 04, 2015, from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanovirgallito/14627473061/in/photostream/
Figure 13. Dipippo, G. (2011, December 12). The Station Churches of Advent. Retrieved from http:// www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2011/12/station-churches-of-advent.html#.VW_9pPk0WG5
Figure 4. Williamson, R. (2013, May 31). Piazza Gar Aulenti / AECOM. Retrieved from ArchDaily: http://www.archidaily.com/?p=379624
Figure 14. St. Peter’s Square. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.aviewoncities.com/rome/piazzasanpietro.htm
Figure 5. Williamson, R. (2013, May 31). Piazza Gar Aulenti / AECOM. Retrieved from ArchDaily: http://www.archidaily.com/?p=379624
Figure 15. St. Peter’s Square. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.aviewoncities.com/rome/piazzasanpietro.htm
Figure 6. globetrotter-travels. (2015, April 13). Tye new skyline of Milano. Retrieved from Globetrotter: http://globetrotter-blog.com/tye-new-skyline-of-milan/
Figure 16. St. Peter’s Square. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.aviewoncities.com/rome/piazzasanpietro.htm
Figure 7. globetrotter-travels. (2015, April 13). Tye new skyline of Milano. Retrieved from Globetrotter: http://globetrotter-blog.com/tye-new-skyline-of-milan/
Figure 17. Google Earth. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/Piazza+San+Pietro/@41.9021066,12.4568874,495m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m3!3m2!1s0x132f60663832b7d9:0x6e46933153e416e4!4b1!6m1!1e1
Figure 8. Autagavaia, L. (2015, May 30). Figure 9. Google Inc. (2015). Google Earth. Retrived from http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html Figure 10. Google Inc. (2015). Google Earth. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/earth/ download/ge/agree.html
Figure 18. Matt, L. (2013, October 18). St Patrik Square. Retrieved from http://transportblog.co.nz/ wp-content/uploads/2013/10/St-Patricks-Square-before-and-after.jpg Figure 19. Waller, J. (2014, April 28). St Peter’s Square. Retrieved from http://wallerjoel.typepad. com/.a/6a01a5117102a7970c01a3fcfb56e5970b-pi
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Publicness THEORY SEMINAR
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
Manuel de Sola-Morales Manuel was born on January 8th ,1939 and died on February 27, 2012. He was one of the most important Architect and urban planner at Barcelona. He was also a Professor of urbanism of the School of Architecture of Barcelona and the founder of the Catalan society planning. Awards: Winner of National Planning award 1983 Grand prix of Europe Urbanism 2000 Received the Cross of St. George.
Figure 1. ARCHITECT AND URBAN PLANNER MANUEL DE SOLĂ€-MORALES (2012)
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
An interpretation of Manuel de Sola-Morales essay on the impossible project of public space, which was published in 2010. The problem with the definition of public space nowadays is that it is a set term , completely ignoring the meaning of public space. It seems to be defined as a place to lounge around and have lunch. Everything in general seems to be difined as “public space”. Manuel points out that quality has significantly decreased, and architects tend to make their designs look ‘pretty’ and calls it public space. A public space is a place where citizens gather, for events, to socialize and to do activities.
“A deliberation such as this is confronted with a terminological problem: the semantic debasement of the term “public space”, which is indiscriminately used for any exercise in land-filling, transforming or prettifying vacant land. All too often, the category of “public space” is used without taking into account the requirement of real urban quality that the term entails. This urbanity is the quality of significant places of collective and political content in their very material form. “Material urbanity”, the ability of urban material to express civic, aesthetic, functional and social meanings, is a basic concept when it comes to defining public space and, hence, intrinsic to the aims of this Prize.”
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
He emphasizes that public spaces are now overly designed, having to many unessary features, calling them a “cramming of forms and planimetric geometres”. Flat design can only be seen in the surface, no high ground or low ground. It is defined by to set rules then goes to a point. In a vacant space theres always something less is more.
“Otherwise, a cramming of forms and planimetric geometries, the unease of frustrated architectural projects at zero elevation, or an arbitrary compositional interplay of surfaces can come to occupy public terrains with apparently infinite freedom. Mannerism is conspicuous, while the vocabulary of alignments, lamp posts, pavements, high ground and low ground, pergolas, ramps and green patches burgeons ad nauseum.”
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
Civic space is always unprecictable, architects usually come up with a new way to design around the difficulty of the unpredictable modern urban growth, but in the end alot of these public space made over the past years ended up just being ill-mannered and crap.
“Civic space is very difficult. Some projects merely reform outmoded spaces which are, on occasion, of great urban significance, to give them innovative or surprising, subjectively affirmative forms. Others confront new spheres of urban growth in order to procure therein some expression of public dignity. Still others understand the site as an available empty area, making the most of the occasion to invent new artifices, installations of a new urban symbology.�
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
How is public space space rated? Who desides what is, and what is not considered a good public space? How is a good public spcae rated? Can we actually determine what is a good public space based on attraction, size or materials? Or should we determine a site based on catagories such as, functionality, publicness, and even sustainability? What are even the standards of publicness? It is difficult to judge since there are so many potential, issues and so many expectations to interact with the space. You cant please evryone.
“Hence, if all urban space is more or less public (and all public space is more or less of or for private interests), what would be the specificity of what we conventionally call “public spaces”? What would a Prize (European or otherwise) for “public space” projects be about? Can we determine which projects count and which ones don’t as such spaces? And once they are singled out, should the projects be evaluated for the intensity in which they are “public” (the more “public” a project, the higher the grade), or according to how good the spaces are (more attractive, more functional, more impressive), or for the degree to which they incorporate certain critical questions that the contemporary city has not yet managed to collectivise (traffic, segregation, largeness of scale, sustainability)?”
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
A great amount of work is put into designing a site and how it works, but it seems the main objective of any site nowadays is to create unusal designs that stand out to win awards. It’s like the architects creates and treats their work as “Art” in a show room. Just like Gau Aulenti when she designed “Piazza Gau Aulenti” it is more advertise since it is surrounded by commercial shops. Public space-just a place to show off their style and not caring about the context (There’s no link).
“Public space or show room? The very valuable collection of projects that the CCCB has been putting together over the years, as with the European Archive for Urban Public Space, can simultaneously give rise to contradictory feelings of admiration and misgiving. This is a catalogue of excellence that permits one to discover what terms – old and new – have captured the attention of administrators and project designers, and what examples have been giving rise to prototypes and sequences. It is an incontrovertible demonstration of the enormous surge in attention to matters pertaining to the city’s public affairs and the public cost-effectiveness of giving them material form in different corners of the city or in available bits of land. Again, however, the sight of so many, many projects all together also lays bare the repetition of a lot of gratuitous gesturing and a great deal of gymnastics in forms striving for originality and surprise, as if public land were a blank page for the personal pleasure of the project designer. Undulations, ruptures, continuities and rows, screens and splodges, are combined – always out of the blue – as pieces of a closed and self-referencing composition.”
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THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
Sola-Morales then makes up his own definition of public space, seperating it them into four main catagories.
“Scrutiny of the projects present in the European Archive for Urban Public Space suggested to me that they should be sorted according to their stance as proposals, their methodological pretensions. It is not easy, I believe, to produce the usual typological, thematic or scale-oriented classifications. The precise intention behind the project, which is not easy to divine either, can help us, however, to advance in critical knowledge of public space practice. Four types may be distinguished here:
1. “Tidying-up projects there are many projects (the greater part) that re-order spaces on top of themselves ...” -An example to this is St Patricks square where they cover it up to make it look nice.
1. Tidying-up projects: there are many projects (the greater part) that re-order spaces on top of themselves, making them more useful, more attractive and more novel. They respond to political intentions of visible investment, which are specific to more difficult or more representative spaces. They set out to bring them up to date and spruce them up.
2. “Projects that expand the previous sphere of public space..” -Has a sense of purpose just like Aotea square and the bus station. It doesn’t matter if its a tidy up job as long as it works.
Rarely do these projects convey any content other than a good makeup job.
3. “Projects that collectivise. These projects, the most incisive, accept the strategic goal of creating public space with private ingredients, on the basis of an understanding of collective space..” -The waterfront has a political movement same goes to the America’s Cup. This type of public space is not explicitly but has a wider purpose to gather people like the Christchurch rebuilt.
The evaluation to be made in this case is primarily functional. 2. Projects that expand the previous sphere of public space and that, even while sticking to known typological guidelines, set about designing new areas, different in scale and location, either because of topographical difficulties or thematic complexity. This is basic urban planning activity.
4. “Projects that invent. These are the few initiatives that are born of an ill-defined occasion, without any specific programme, without purpose and without clear limits...” -Projects that has no parameters or rules. This creates their new Guide line “New” New Zealand.
These works have a technical value. 3. Projects that collectivise. These projects, the most incisive, accept the strategic goal of creating public space with private ingredients, on the basis of an understanding of collective space (public+private) as a defining substance of what is urban. Explicitly or otherwise, such projects take the view that urbanising means collectivising, and they may have a lot or a little in terms of form, but they do not shape. Rather, they are actions of mental strategy. In their intimate sense, they have a political value. 4. Projects that invent. These are the few initiatives that are born of an ill-defined occasion, without any specific programme, without purpose and without clear limits. They propose uncommon images on the basis of inventing a type of public space for which, precisely, there is no type. It is the invention of form and programme at the same time and means accepting the risk – of error, or failure – as a premise of planning. The value here is artistic.” 41
THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT OF PUBLIC SPACE
He has concluded that the importance of public space is essential towards a city’s survival. Quoting that a “desacralised public space is the condition for the city’s existance and without public spcae the only things left are the rural setting and castles”. Napoleon preffers the piazza is more variety, since its in the middle of the city it is more favourable. Treats Public space as a collective space for locals, Unlike NZ each area has their own space.
The individual is attenuated when public space is offered as a readied room. Napoleon, when he reached the Piazza San Marco on invading Venice, said that it is “the most beautiful salon in Europe”, seeing in it a space to be used in keeping with norms and customs; the exact opposite of Barcelona residents freely enjoying Mar Bella. Desacralised public space is the condition for the city’s existence and without public space the only things left are the rural setting and castles.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Text De Sola-Morales, M. (2010) The Impossible projects of Public Space. Retrieved from http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/c006-l-impossible-projecte-de-l-espai-public
Image Figure 1: ARCHITECT AND URBAN PLANNER MANUEL DE SOLĂ€-MORALES. (2012). Retrieved from http://intermediatelandscapes.com/2012/02/27/architect-and-urban-planner-manuel-de-sola-morales-dies-at-73/
Coverpage Central Park, Manhattan, NYC. (2010) Retrieved June 3, 2015, from Wikipedia: http://upload. wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/The_Mall_%26_Literary_Walk,_Central_Park,_Manhattan,_NYC.JPG Tel Aviv Port Public Space Regeneration by Mayslits Kassif Architects. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2010/11/tel-aviv-port-public-space-regeneration-by-mayslits-kassif-architects/
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What we gleaned from Infrastructure Infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. (“Infrastructure”, 2015) Infrastructure has an important significance in economy. Completed infrastructure will promote social and economic activity. Also the quality of an Infrastructure directly affects a country's economic growth potential and the ability of an enterprise to engage effectively. (“Infrastructure”, 2015) In addition, Green infrastructure is a concept that highlights the importance of the natural environment in decisions about land use planning. In particular there is an emphasis on the "life support" functions provided by a network of natural ecosystems, with an emphasis on interconnectivity to support long-term sustainability. (“Green infrastructure”, 2014)
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LANDSCAPE INFRASTRUCTURE THEORY SEMINAR
Compiled by: Vivian Li, Reuben Ellison, Trina Gaston, Nick Slattery & Georgina Dean 45
INFRASTRUCTURE/LANDSCAPE
JULIAN RAXWORTHY & JESSICA BLOOD
Julian Raxworthy is a landscape architect. Initially trained at Ryde TAFE as a landscaper, he graduated with his undergraduate degree (with honours) and research masters degree (by design) in landscape architecture from RMIT, Australia. His PhD with the University of Queensland concerned landscape architecture, gardening and change.He was a Senior Lecturer at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) until 2004, and at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) until 2011, teaching design and history & theory. In 2004 he was a visiting Research Fellow at University of Western Australia. He worked as Design Manager for Aspect Melbourne until 2003, and was a co-founder of Aspect Studios in Sydney. He was also Principal Landscape Architect with Donovan Hill Architects. In 2014 he joined the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Cape Town.A co-founder of Kerb, the landscape architecture journal from RMIT (now in its 20th edition), he writes regularly in the Australian architectural and design media, and internationally in Topos, Paisea, JoLA and SCAPE. In 2004, a book he co-edited with Jessica Blood, The MESH Book: Landscape & Infrastructure, was published by RMIT Press, and in 2011 Sun publishers in Amsterdam published Sunburnt: Landscape Architecture in Australia, co-authored with Sue-Anne Ware.International engagements include being a keynote speaker at the IV European Biennial of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona, LOCUS ISTE in Denmark and EASY GOING, at the Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam. He has twice been a workshop coordinator at the Ecole Superior Nationale du Paysage (ENSP) Versailles and also at Louisiana State University. In 2010 he convened a Myles H. Thaler symposium on Australian landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, where he was a Visiting Professor in 2012.Julian is currently a Lecturer in the Master of Landscape Architecture programme at the University of Cape Town in South Africa
Published by RMIT (June 6, 2005)
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•Raxworthy, Julian. 2013. Novelty in the Entropic Landscape: Landscape architecture,
gardening and change, School of Architecture, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
•Raxworthy, Julian. 2004. “Writing gardens - gardening drawings: Fung, Brunier and
gardening as a model of landscape architectural practice.” Landscape Review Special Issue: CELA 2004 - Here and there? no. 9 (1):196-200.
•Raxworthy, Julian. 2010. “Australian landscape architecture evolution.” Paisea Dos
(5):12-17.
•Raxworthy, Julian. 2011. “Nature, form, landscape: Malene Hauxner’s practice of his-
tory.” scape no. 2011 (1):60-69.
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A conclusion could not be reached because writing about infrastructure is, it seems, like writing about background: it is always there, but the closer you get to it, the more background there is behind it.
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Infrastructure is a relational term, and is not supposed to be the specific focus of discussion: the conjunction of ‘infra’ with structure that while it is a vital structural term, it is inherently hidden.
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“Designers operating in the realm of infrastructure like it for precisely the reasons that the community doesn’t – it’s big, it’s legible in the scale of the city and it has effects the lives of citizens. Infrastructure is a potent force in the city, and it’s provision has significant impact on quality of life for people, and this sense of relevance is the sort of relevance that designers would like the work to have too.”
“Appearing infrastructural is not the same as being infrastructural: ornament cannot have a structural relationship and still be ornament. In this context , to make something look like infrastructure is to give it the appearance of absolute functional surety, to make it important.” “Infrastructure seems to offer the possibility for importance that landscape architecture is searching for.”
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“The model of the Roman aqueduct provides a tangible precedent for the possibility of infrastructure being of a icon of healthy public realm: the provision of resources in an artistic manner, by the government, which themselves became an artefact for the community engagement. “
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“The landscape is the most basic form of infrastructure. At its most basic, the landscape is the literal surface upon which all the objects and activities of nature and culture take place: it is the set for the play that is existence. “
“the idea that the landscape, as produced by landscape architects is, itself, an infrastructure. In discursive terms, however, as mentioned earlier, this view of the landscape architecture production as the production of infrastructure could be seen as a means to elevate the importance of landscape, appropriating the functional necessity of infrastructure, perhaps unconfident that its subject is more than simply pleasing.”
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“We need to re-engage with the real qualities of infrastructure – not simply its conduit, but the material that is carried: water, air, electricity and so on. In there terms, to talk about infrastructure is to talk about control and harnessing of the elements, and since Strang onwards, infrastructure has offered landscape architecture the opportunity for its own flexible material palette, particular water, to gain systemic urban importance�
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The disappearance of Infrastructure “With increasing frustration we noted that very few essays addressed the (literally) concrete reality of infrastructure that confronts us everyday: the roads, the power poles and so on. Professional landscape architects will be more than aware that it is this ‘stuff ’ that is challenging to work with, where the mandate for designers is simply to mitigate it, to shrub it up, to screen it, to render it invisible, and thereby restore amenity”
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“Like high-rise housing, also during the same time, where the community wants a quality of life part of this ‘Modern’ age, it may not necessarily be interested in the ‘look’ of it.”
NIMBY – ‘Not In My Back Yard’
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“landscape architects simply do not have the professional position to be given the whole box and dice.�
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“it is the ability to work in a manner like infrastructure that offers the greatest potential for landscape architecture, as well as for infrastructure. This is not to suggest that there is some sort of infrastructure design process, but rather that it can be characterised as an ability to locate the strategic moments that exist within a number of realms and disciplines that can be influenced by designers to achieve significant outcomes” “Everything has an infrastructure but not everything is an infrastructure. In a discussion about infrastructure and landscape, the biggest question is – do we have a current cultural interest in what lies beneath the obvious”
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TEXT OVERVIEW/ NOTES FROM SEMINAR • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Infrastructure is background. Visible improvement. Come together as one, but doesn’t overshadow. Be apart of the infrastructure. Users will find ways to interact with it, that were not intended or thought of by the designers or the built purpose. Sence of icon, cultural identity or icon of society. Built it in a way that is meaningful. Decipher the hidden layers. Can’t keep hiding it up. Educating. Layers upon layers. Different levels of infrastructure. Our effect on the landscape as we design around/ on it. Need to incorporate infrastructure into our projects, not relegating it to the side/ overhead/ underneath. Make infrastructure more aware. Designs should be multi-functional. Be more aware of elements, incorporate into designs ( Eg water). Could be to make it more important. Create solutions that embrace - not shun. Cop - out solutions to hide it. Use knowledge to influence design - create alongside other professions from the start: Architects & Engineers. Potential to be more aware. Work along the design process.
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LANDSCAPE INFRASTRUCTURE HISTORICAL SEMINAR
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BACK BAY FENS
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Location
• Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, The father of Landscape Architecture (1822 - 1903). • Initial groundwork started in 1820 independent of Olmsted and was finished 1889 and updated in 2001. • Purpose was the rejuvenation and remediation of the Fens, as they had become polluted and a health hazard. • Located in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts. • The environment was a combination of fresh and saline water, the brackish waterway was often prone to flooding. • Olmstead aquired a splitter in order to seperate the raw sewage from the rainwater, as to vastly improve the health of the waterway.
F. L. Olmsted circa 1890
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Historic Images of the fens
1882 photo of the dredging of The Fens. (Boston Park Commission Report, 1883.)
The Riverway section of Muddy River under construction, 1892. (Collection of the National Park Service, 1893)
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View over The Fens in 1907 (Library of Congress)
Interactions of the park and the surrounding areas • Infrastructurally, The Fens are tasked with the collection of runoff from the larger Boston Watershed Catchment. • It in conjunction with the rest of the Emerald Necklace serves the purpose of cleaning a vast volume of water that was - prior to its design - running unmitigated through raw sewage and other runoff into the larger Charles River and then into Boston Harbour. • Gentrification of the area leading to and improvement of social structure and local ecology. • Forms a connection for commuters to drive over the interlinking bridges throughout the site. • Large public space that used for personal transportation (walking, running & biking). • Later development in 1910 was the damming of the Charles River, this changed it from salt to a freshwater environ, requiring a new planting plan. • Gardens built in 1941 as the outbreak of war called the Victory Garden, it is the last continually maintained garden of its type and is a community produce and flower garden, the local residents use it for fresh produce and is a vital meeting point for the community.
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VIEWS WITHIN THE PARK (SHERYL BURNS, 2013.)
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Comparison of our sites Noosa Bus station • • • • • • • •
The Back Bay Fens
Water is a minimal aspect. Primary focus is Transportation. People circulation. Indigenous plants, tropical and subtropical. Transplanted existing trees. Collection of rainwater, used for cleaning and flushing of public toilets. Recycled timber. Located close to large body of water.
• • • • • • • •
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Tidal estuarine pond. Primary focus is Phytoremediation. Circulation patterns around and through the site. Wide range of vegetation, from wetland rushes to mature specimen trees. Stone brick and steel used for over bridges. Located close to large body of water. Part of a larger designed network of ponds and lakes Strong links to community with the Victory Gardens.
LANDSCAPE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT SEMINAR
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Noosa Junction Station
Noosa Junction Station
Infrastructure- What it means to us The essential services and facilities that are needed to function as a society or community. These include: Transportation and connection networks Power/water and sewage lines Green Infrastructure: Is where there is emphasis placed on the meaning of people and a society and not just the environment and greenery.
Infrastructure- Definition
Opened in 2012, Noosa Junction Station is the transport hub for Noosa and the surrounding context, which is 2hrs north of Brisbane, in the state of Queensland, Australia. Architects Guymer Bailey Construction worked along side Bark design to build and Landscape a facility that is functional and an innovative public space. The Design approach was consistent with the idea of Green Infrastructure bringing in the Noosa look and feel. They wished to create a real sense of place for the community. It consists of a number of bays, platforms, resting spaces and thoroughfares, while accommodating thousands of people everyday. It has become a benchmark for infrastructure projects like it, around the Queensland state and is set to be replicated further across Australia.
Definition: “The basic physical and organizational structures and facilities need for the operation of a society or enterprise” (Hung & Aquino, 2013).
Figure 2: Tourist and visitors immediately sense the “Noosa look and feel’ when they step off the Bus and onto the platform. (Guymer and Bailey , 2012).
Figure 1. An early concept sketch for Noosa Junction Station (Smith, 2012).
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Scale 1:1000
Context
Figure 4. Google maps
Figure 3: Noosa Junction Site in the Wider Context (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
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Noosa Station facts
Scale 1:500- Before development
Landscape Architect: Guymer Bailey Landscape Location: Noosa – Queensland, AustraliaDesign year: 2010Construction year: 2011Area: 12,810m2 Cost: $12m ($936 per m2). 220/m2 for Landscaping. Client: Sunshine Coast Regional Council Landscape Architect: Robert Waddell Architect: Bark Design Architects (Bailey, 2012), Figure 5: (“Noosa Junction Station”, 2012).
Figure 4. Google maps
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Noosa Station facts
Designer Principal Landscape Architect, Associate. Registered Landscape Architect, A.I.L.A. Graduate Diploma Landscape Architecture, QUT Bachelor of Built Environment (Landscape Architecture) QUT. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015). Company: Guymer Bailey Landscape, within Guymer bailey Architects. Figure 7. Robert Wadell. (Guymer Design emphasis on a sustainable future. and Bailey, 2009) Transform spaces so they are contextually appropriate. ‘Browns Plans Bus station’ and ‘two way creek bridge’, both on the sunshine coast.
Circulation Figure 6. Scale 1:500 of Station site. (Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015). Noosa Bus Station has an eastern/western flow of Buses, coaches and other Vehicles. This wraps around the station From Sunshine beach road and exists at Cooyar road to the south west. Noosa Junction has three Station platforms which pick up and drop off passengers. Waiting spaces are spacious to allow for clear line of site with both passengers and Buses. Courtyards are a stationary flow where people are able to relax and enjoy
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Distances
Diagram
Figure 8. Google Maps
Key: Black: Buildings Red: Circulation Light Green: Grass Green: Vegetation Blue: Storm water Grey: Road
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Stormwater
Figure 8. Google Maps Figure 9. The shared use zone connects the Station to the Noosa Junction commercial precinct physically and with design character. Existing trees have been relocated from other parts of the site to provide shade for pedestrian and carparking. R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Guymer bailey Design has Accommodated for a 25 year storm water flow, whereas Northern Busway was 10 years(R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015). This is due to the figures mentioned earlier of 915mm rainfall over a third of what Northern Busway is. The Catchment area includes Noosa national park and the smaller area and flows in to .
11 Cesspits on sight with 7 slit and grate drains. Water flow off site following a western fall down contours. Important for Peoples safety.
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Vegetation Surrounding vegetation comprises of 6700 plants mainly endemic species. With over 100 mature trees that provide shade and reduce the ambient temperature. (“Noosa junction station”, 2014). Existing tree species of significant value, including a large fig tree and several Pandanus trees, were relocated ensuring their high environmental and cultural value was not lost at their site.
Figure 12. The area planting has been selected for its tolerance to dry shade to protect disabledcompliant seating. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Figure 10: Vines are slowly creeping over the arbour structure providing green amenity for people. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Figure 11: A vine-covered wall separates pedestrian and bicycle path. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Figure 13. The lawn amphitheatre provides ’green’ open space for the public. Endemic plant species reinforce the subtropical and coastal of Noosa Junction Station. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
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How does this relate to infrastruture?
Similarities They have understood the safety of compensating for large amounts of people with large waiting areas, low lying vegetation, and efficient transport systems Both designs have facilities and services that help to function as a society In terms of their design layout and features to allow an even flow between Public, transport, Utilities and the environment. Both Stations have native planting which reflect the location and place that the design has with the landscape. In particular, Noosa has focused on the restoration process of some significant planting.
Differences Noosa’s focus was on the place that people had with the Station and the awareness of its ability to sustain a changing community. Opus, who designed the North bus way, emphasised the environmental concerns of Stormwater treatment and how this might affect the Akoranga Station.
Noosa Junction Station design applies a new model for public transport infrastructure design. The new model moves beyond public transport infrastructure just providing a transportation function. It approaches public transport infrastructure as a ‘green infrastructure’ asset at the same time as approaching public transport infrastructure and a valuable place. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Northern Busway has a larger amount of traffic flow through the site as it is deep in the Auckland transport networks. Noosa is in the heart of a much smaller network of transport.
Catalyst for Future Production for other Sites across Queensland and Australia with a sustainable policy. Business are up 20% (Transitlink-Noosa Station, 2012), profit due to the, implementation of the Design. Features such as green amphitheater, pergola and shaded pods create the Noosa Look and feel. Figure 16: People exiting the site. (R, Waddell, personal communication, May 7, 2015).
Less car parks in the Northern busway to Noosa creating more awareness of people and cars and buses in Noosa. Northern busway had them relatively separate.
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LANDSCAPE INFRASTRUCTURE SITE VISIT
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Infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. The Northern Busway is a segregated busway with dedicated park & ride facilities along State Highway 1 in the north of Auckland, New Zealand, linking the North Shore with the north end of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Also the Northern Busway is New Zealand’s first purpose built road dedicated to bus passenger transport, and forms a key part of Auckland’s rapid public transport network. There are busway, bus stations, Electricity transmission cables, ect in the area. In addition, concept design for the busway was developed by MRCagney, with detailed design and consultation completed by Mario Madayag Architecture, Jasmax, Beca Group, Opus and Connell Wagner. Fletcher Construction was responsible for construction. On the project was to use polystyrene blocks as lightweight fill material to build bridge approaches on weak ground. Furthermore, the alignment is adjacent to sensitive marine areas that required environmental protection. And design solutions needed to address staged construction to provide temporary traffic management. Therefore, these become significant challenges. Northern Busway was a demanding project that required an extensive palate of plant species and was a project of national significance in that it was a pioneer in the use of landscaping on New Zealand Transit projects. The site is unique with its own unique landscape architecture as well.
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Infrastructure is the system of organising and allowing movement patterns around a city, this can present itself in the physical utilities that are built and maintained to keep a society functioning and shapes the decisions of how a city will evolve geographically, economically and socially, it provides amenities and resources to millions of people. This includes roads, transport networks, power grids, wastewater treatment and gas to name a few. But as our understanding of the complex interactions we have with the urban environment changes, so does our interpretation of current services. Historically infrastructure was a monofunctional service, where it only served one purpose, roads were just that. But with the change in perception, once singular now perform multiple functions. Another notable aspect is the injection of new technologies and materials into preexisting infrastructure, in ways that mean the environmental disruption can be lessened to various degrees. For example in 2007, Chicago implemented a Green Alley Program that replaced 3,057 km2 of badly drained alleyways into 14.16 km2 of permeable surface paving. This in turn reduced flooding, aided with recharging the local aquifers due to a reintroduction of surface water reticulation and reducing the HIE (Heat Island Effect) for the city. All without impeding the functional use of the alleyways for service vehicles and the citizens who used them on a daily basis. Roads now are now serving the dual purpose of transport corridors and support structures for phytoremediation that run along-side the routes. The Northern Busway is a key example of this as it is situated in an estuarine environ, in order to minimise the impact on an already stressed ecology, phytoremediation ponds were implemented. These aim to filter out heavy metals, hydrocarbon variants and other toxins that are suspended within the runoff from the bus station and roadway. As well as providing additional habitat to local biota such as Pukeko and Grey Herons.
The Northern Busway is an integral element to Aucklands overall infrastructure, It provides a public service to the patrons who use it as a means of transport to and from the Auckland CBD. It’s reduction of single passenger cars also cuts down on congestion during rush-hour peak times. Meaning a reduction of fuel consumption close to 400,000 litres annually.
The overall concept of Infrastructure is hierarchical in nature, this allocation serves to rank by purpose and capacity. For example motorways serves the purpose of connecting different areas of the supercity, it supports higher speeds of traffic and is massive in scale and magnitude. Inversely the roadways of urban neighbourhoods operate a fraction of the speed and volume, where instead of a giant infrastructural object that is given precedence to that of the geographical landform, it winds and fits to the contours of the land in situ. This means that infrastructure must be transitional in the operations it performs in regards to intersections and feeder routes, these will syphon from the local scale to that of a regional one. The northern busway serves this purpose in a similar sense, it being the main high speed- high volume transport route to and from the CBD.
This can be attributed to the multiple terminals along the length of the project that provide a corridor into the surrounding areas. The terminal at Smales Farm is an invaluable connection as it provides service to the surrounding secondary schools including Westlake Girls High School, Carmel College and Westlake Boys High School. It’s proximity to Milford Town Centre and North Shore Hospital also allows for the ease of traffic to be lessened on the existing Infrastructure of roads and motorways.
The integration of stormwater management and treatment in our project performs in a myriad of ways, The high volume impermeable surfaces like the transport corridor have a concentration of pollutants which is collected by the rain, this water is collected in culverts and processed off site to filter out heavy metals, petroleum based fluids and other fine particulate. Low volume surfaces such as roofs and footpaths are channeled into reticulation and remediation ponds that are situated alongside the main terminals. This has a duality of beneficial outcomes, it cuts down on the stress loading of the already overburdened wastewater systems and it also allows water to return the the cyclic filtration method of groundwater purification.
Further north the infrastructure caters for the ever expanding retail locus of Albany, it again lessens the strain upon car parking space allowing a flow of users to use the local services without the demand for idle car space.
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Infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. The Northern Busway is a segregated busway with dedicated park & ride facilities along State Highway 1 in the north of Auckland, New Zealand, linking the North Shore with the north end of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Also the Northern Busway is New Zealand’s first purpose built road dedicated to bus passenger transport, and forms a key part of Auckland’s rapid public transport network. There are busway, bus stations, Electricity transmission cables, ect in the area. In addition, concept design for the busway was developed by MRCagney, with detailed design and consultation completed by Mario Madayag Architecture, Jasmax, Beca Group, Opus and Connell Wagner. Fletcher Construction was responsible for construction. On the project was to use polystyrene blocks as lightweight fill material to build bridge approaches on weak ground. Furthermore, the alignment is adjacent to sensitive marine areas that required environmental protection. And design solutions needed to address staged construction to provide temporary traffic management. Therefore, these become significant challenges.
The northern busway is a two-way segregated road system dedicated to buses to ensure optimal rapid transit to the CBD. It spans 6.25km in length alongside state high way 1 between Constellation Drive and Esmonde Road. It links the north shore with the north end of Auckland’s Harbour Bridge providing commuters with fast, efficient travel to Auckland’s CBD while avoiding congested motorway. There are currently five bus stations; Akoranga, Smales Farm, Sunnynook, Constellation Drive park and ride and Albany Park & Ride. All station provide shelter, cycle parking and designed to ensure the public’s safety with features such as low planting, night lighting and CCTV. The busway allows future opportunity for growth. currently the Auckland city council has hired Beca to do an investigation for an extension of the busway is underway. Possible new bus stations could be Rosedale, Redvale and Silverdale. There is 16kms from Constellation Drive to the Silverdale interchange so the busway could reach lengths of 22.25km to reliefs Auckland’s congested northern motor way as growth pressures demand over the next 30 years. Akoranga bus Station is located on Barry’s Point, on the Northern motorway alongside the Esmonde Road interchange which is designed to disperse traffic into local areas. The motorway cuts through separating Akorange Drive with surrounding suburbs. The planning involved in designing the Northern busway involved fast research into the connections between transport modes and the future shape of Auckland. Its intention is to change people’s attitudes towards travel and encourage alternatives to driving a private car, this saving money on fuel, also cutting down travel time. The Northern busway has been a huge sucess and taken around 5000 private vehicles off the roads, providing commuters with half the travel time when using the bus facilities.
Northern Busway was a demanding project that required an extensive palate of plant species and was a project of national significance in that it was a pioneer in the use of landscaping on New Zealand Transit projects. The site is unique with its own unique landscape architecture as well.
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The Northern busway is an increasingly popular alternative to the private car, it has been considered one of Auckland transports biggest successes with an estimate of 5-8 million trips per year. Over the last 8 years it’s seen a steady increase of passengers using the busway, this steady increase reflects the efforts made to improve the bus lanes and transit lanes in other parts of the North Shore. Figures show that 12,000 out of 29,000 people using the harbour bridge during mornings and evenings are now travelling by bus. The table below shows the growth in passengers over the last 8 years.
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The main source of seawater that flows into the site is coming from Bayswater, which is a small bay like catchment. However the bay itself is used by many different people, such as kite and windsurfers that tend to head in to the bay during high winds and also storms. Also the location of Bayswater Marina, which is at the tip of the bay, close to Devonport and the central city CBD. Due to the bay being very tidal, low tides tends to expose more land meaning water does not flow into the Akoranga Station. This also means that when there is a low tide it tends to expose sand banks in the bay, thus meaning that the bay isn’t used by boats due to it being an unsafe and unmapped location, meaning that the boats have the potential of running aground or beaching if they miss or judge the tides wrong. By the lack of boats using the bay it becomes a safe place for wind and kite surfers. The only issue that becomes a problem is when there are king tides, these are extreme high tides. This is an issue as it tends to raise the normal high tide mark. This is where the mangroves become extremely important as it saves the banks from eroding while extreme high tide is occurring. Talking to Opus, the designers of the Arkoranga Station we were informed that they had small problems with high tides and king tides. to mitigate and cater for these natural phenomina they had to create a ‘back flow’, which stopped the high tide coming onto the site. Large high tides where an issue, however they aren’t all that frequent, mainly when large storms occur. During the building process they had to stage their work around the ebb & flow of the tides, as well as while working on the creek area. This map/plan is illustrative only and all information should be independently verified on site before taking any action.Copyright Auckland Council. Boundary information from LINZ (Crown Copyright Reserved). Whilst due care has been taken, Auckland Council gives no warranty as to the accuracy and completeness of any information on this map/plan and accepts no liability for any error, omission or use of the information. Height datum: Auckland 1946.
Esmonde 2006
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Similar difficulties were encountered when trying to plant and build whilst being surrounded by water. However building during low tides and on reclaimed land they ran into problems with marine sediments. Marine sediment is chalk like pieces of sedimentary rock, which comes from erosion; these then build up to the ocean floor. Interestingly the ocean itself is one of the largest deposits of sediment, 8% is in-fact sediment and it can build up to 9km thick. Adding more weight onto what would be the road meant that the sediment would become more of an issue. (Similar to Christchurch if we had an earthquake all the sediment would come out of the ground and make the bus station unusable.) Opus worked around this by laying large pieces of polystyrene in lieu of a large portion of concrete, to reduce weight and loading of the area. The planting that is used on the site where plants that could grow around the storm water and tidal areas, mangroves and also special grasses that where able to withstand the sea air and sea breeze. The importance of Mangroves Mangroves bring large ecological factors to the area, the mangroves attract fish, crabs and shrimp, which in turn mangroves become one of the main habitats that create a great source of food. Coastal protection, the large dense roots mean that the plant itself is able to trap sediments, also traps unwanted dirt that is getting into the coastal area. The roots are also extremely stable which means that they prevent erosion.
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Northern Busway had a mixture of natives and hybrids creating an expressive and new look to the motorway environment. They used plants that are located in the northcote bush further up the road. The entire native bush which tided the two sites together, in a way making the site looks as though it hadn’t been scaped, and that it was all natural growth. However the planting around the stream or creek could only be plants suited for the sea, so there were lots of special grasses that were used and also adding mangroves. These plants are only located in the intertidal zone. Also there was use of coloured foliage, specimen trees and native bush to bring this collective look together. The site is unique with its own unique landscape architecture with links in between that are planted in a mixture of native bush species.
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Example
Botanical Name
Common Name
Identification
Purpose
Phormium cookianum
Mountain flax
- Sword-like leaves. - Tall seed heads.
- Stunning shape as a specimen plant. - Low maintenance.
Leptospermum scoparium
Manuka
- Small prickly shrub. - White flowers with red centres.
- Grows well in costal conditions. - Can be grown as a hedge.
Corynocarpus laevigatus
Karaka
- Evergreen. - Large glossy dark green leaves.
- Good as large screen. - Costal shelter.
Dacrycarpus dacrydioides
White Pine, Kahikatea
- Stout columnar shape.
- Specimen Tree. - Screening tool.
Podocarpus totara
Totara
- Specimen tree. - Needle-like leaves.
- Suitable for costal areas. - Tough windbreak or screening tree. - Can prune to shape.
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Example
Botanical Name Muehlenbeckia complexa
Common Name Pohuehue
Identification - Tiny round leaves. - Dense multistemmed.
Purpose - Grows vigorously to cover banks and difficult areas. - Ideal for weed suppression.
Comprosma repens
Mirror Plant
- Very shiny dark green leaves with lighter interior.
- Well suited to coastal envitonments. - Barrier plant. - Ground cover.
Phormium tenax
Harekeke, costal flax
- Upright sword shaped leaves. - Large clumping habit.
- Evergreen, hardy in a maritime area.
Cordyline australis
Cabbage Tree
- Stout trunk. - Sword-like leaves.
- Useful to Landscape Architects as is low maintenance. - Tolerant of salty costal conditons.
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References
Smith, T. (2012, August 21). Noosa Junction Station. Retrieved from: http:// architectureau.com/articles/noosa-junction-station/. Transitlink-Noosa Station (2012). Retrived from: http://translink.com.au/sites/default/ files/assets/resources/travel-information/network-information/maps/120101-noosajunction-locality-and-station-map.pdf.
Infrastructure. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/infrastructure.asp Green infrastructure. (2014). Retrieved from http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/ (2011). Progress of construction. Retrieved from http://www.unionparkpress.com/ olmsted-grundel-and-the-remaining-back-bay-fens/ Morrison, K. (2011). Photo of F. L. Olmsted. Retrieved from http://artnewengland. com/blogs/exploring-olmsted/ Google. (2015). Google Maps, various scales. Retrieved from https://www.google. co.nz/maps/place/Back+Bay+Fens/@42.342466,-71.094219,17z/ Berg, S. Restoring Olmsted’s Vision. Retrieved from http://www.muddyrivermmoc. org/restoring-olmsteds-vision/ Alves, S. (2013). Photos around Back Bay Fens. Retrieved from http://whuffling. com/2013/07/08/back-bay-fens/ Bailey. G (2012, October, 22). Noosa Junction Station. Retrieved from: http://hdka. hr/2012/10/noosa-junction-station-by-guymer-bailey-landscape/. GuymerBailey Landscape ( 2009). Retrieved from: http://www.guymerbailey.com.au/ about-us-landscape/company Hung, Y. Y., & Aquino. G. (2013). Landscape Infrastructure (2nd ed.). SWA: Berlin. Noosa Junction Station. (2014). Retrieved from: http://202020vision.com.au/ project/?id=144. Noosa Junction Station. (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.landezine.com/index. php/2012/10/noosa-junction-station-by-guymer-bailey-landscape/.
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Sustainability Introduction It is generally agreed that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Urban sustainability is the idea that a city can be organised without excessive reliance on the surrounding countryside and be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy to efficiently use land, compost used materials. Sustainable landscapes are responsive to the environment and can positively contribute to the development of healthy communities. Sustainability is really important to us as landscape. These problems will get worse if we continue to allow urbanization to unfold haphazardly without consideration of long-term environmental and socioeconomic consequences. To achieve sustainability, therefore, we need to design and build better cities, and explicitly consider urbanization as part of the solution to regional and global sustainability.
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SUSTAINABILITY
SITE VISIT
PROJECT SEMINAR
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DALDY STREET PARK
DALDY STREET PARK
Designer:
A grand, 38m-wide green park, walkway and cycleway and a slow-speed
Client: Date:
Henry Crothers (Architectus)
street has made its way through the heart of Wynyard Quarter. This marks a massive change to Auckland’s Waterfront, which for decades has housed the petrochemical, bulk liquid, fish and marine industries. In 2007 a redevelopment was planned, a 20 year scheme to make the waterfront more accessible and to make it a destination for the public to visit. Daldy Street was part of stage 1 of this redevelopment.
Waterfront Auckland Opened November 2014 after approx. 2 years of construction
Engineers:
Opus NZ
Location:
Auckland CBD/Auckland Waterfront
Planting:
Collaboration with Ngati Whatua and their local iwi plant nursery
Lighting:
IGuzzini NZ
Playground: Width of site:
Daldy Street was designed by Henry Crothers of Architectus (now with LandLab) and engineered by Opus. Stage 1 of the park was made open to the public in November 2014, after approximately 2 years of construction. One of the key components in the design was producing an area of sustainability. This will also be implemented in the rest of the waterfront plan. The industrial history of the site, and the marine surroundings have had significant impact on the design of the space and are visible throughout. The use of recycled materials from the tank farm the park was built on, the tank shaped water collection/slide and references to the industrial past by using materials like corten/weathering steel all reflect their importance in the design process.
Designed by Landlab 38 metres
Previously divided by a large, private industrial site, the two halves of Daldy Street are now reconnected providing a new thoroughfare for vehicles and reclaiming a swathe through the industrial land in the process. This hybrid park/ street provides a continuous green link from Victoria Park right down to the Waterfront and further to the tip of the future Headland Park, which is planned for Wynyard Point. (Sea+City, 2007, P. 8)
Length site: 262.6 m Total Area: 14,493 sq m Awards:
Excellence in Sustainability Award and Excellence in Urban Design Award from NZILA
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DESIGNER
(Ex Lion Nathan Brewery Site), Newmarket, Urban Design and Public Realm Concepts 53 000m2. Viaduct Exchange Auckland CBD, Public Realm design for commercial site 50 000m2.
Henry Crot hers is a landscape architect and urban designer with particular interest and expertise in the design of the public realm and complex urban landscapes. Henry has considerable experience working in multi-disciplinary design teams and collaborating with public authorities, stakeholder groups, community as well as developing successful design partnerships with other creative disciplines. Recent urban design experience includes the master planning of large scale waterfront sites, urban renewal, transport orientated developments, infrastructure projects, design guidelines, commercial and educational campus’s, town centre re-development and the detailed design of public open spaces, streets, gardens, coastal landscapes and low impact design strategies. Henry is a member of the NZILA and is completing a Masters of Urban Design at Auckland University.
Henry Crothers significant projects are: The Wynyard Quarter Master Plan Sea/City Projects and Auckland City Urban and Landscape Design concepts and guides, Plan Change and Precinct Plan documents for Auckland’s waterfront. CBD Streetscapes Queen Street, Lorne Street, Auckland CBD, Public Realm design and implementation $32m & $4m. New Lynn Transport Orientated Development New Lynn Auckland Urban Design and Infrastructural development. Streetscape, Public Open Space and LID design. Hobsonville Landing Masterplan and Coastal Strategy Hobsonville Land Company, Urban Design, Master Planning and Public Realm design for mixed-use waterfront site. Victoria Depot Site Redevelopment Auckland CBD, Landscape Master Plan for CBD site, Public Realm design for former council depot site 250 000m2. Victoria Park Village Redevelopment Freemans Bay, Auckland, Urban Renewal and Public Realm concepts $35m. Campus Master Planning The University of Auckland, City Campus, Auckland CBD, Urban Design and Public Realm concepts. Great Northern Developments 91
DESIGN
CONTEXT
The design approach to the Daldy Street area creates a uniquely New Zealand environment drawing upon the geography of the site as a significant piece of reclaimed land as well as the historic uses of the site. The re-use of local materials and public art directly draw upon the maritime and industrial heritage. Daldy Street was constructed with sustainable design features in mind. This includes the use of recycled concrete and aggregates, new energy efficient LED street lighting and control systems, sustainably sourced timber and low embodied energy materials. There is also a low-impact storm-water system in place which treats rain run-off from the street, park and adjacent development sites. The project re-establishes north-south pedestrian and cycling priority as well as incorporating low impact design strategies, walking and cycling priority, new public transport access (buses and trams) as well as site wide enabling infrastructure. The design language draws on the sites post-industrial and coastal character. It integrates elements of the sites marine archaeology and establishes a native and ecological planting aesthetic which supports a low impact design strategy, local amenity and ecological diversity. The project re-establishes north-south pedestrian and cycling priority as well as incorporating low impact design strategies, walking and cycling priority, new public transport access (buses and trams) as well as site wide enabling infrastructure.
The Wynyard Quarter ‘Urban Design Framework' (UDF) establishes a design-led, site responsive strategy that will guide the redevelopment of this important waterfront site. The Auckland waterfront is a huge, mostly unused, area that will be transformed into residential, commercial, entertainment and social areas to attract people to the enjoy the waterfront. On either side of Daldy Street there is construction just getting underway; around $850 million of private residential and commercial buildings will soon rise high around this green swathe. At the bottom of Daldy Street, on Jellicoe Street another large apartment block will dominate the area. However counteracting this urban development will be the continued construction of green spaces in the area, and the extension of the green corridor that Daldy Street Park has laid the foundation for LandLab, Henry Crothers new firm, have been engaged by Watefront Auckland and Auckland Transport to work together and deliver the second stage of the design project between Pakenham and Fanshawe Streets. This extension is due for completion in 2016 and will see the Waitemata harbour connected all the way up to Victoria Park.
 
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HISTORY This area was a part of the wider Freemans Bay catchment, originating from the area around Western Park and Karangahape Road, to its subsequent use by the petro-chemical industry (the tank farm). The Western Reclamation, now known as Wynyard Quarter was progressively constructed by Ports of Auckland's predecessor, the Auckland Harbour Board, with the last component of the reclamation being completed in 1930, to provide additional berth age capacity and flat land for port related activities. Changes to the way fuel was supplied to Auckland meant much of the land was no longer required for bulk fuel storage, freeing it up for progressive revitalization. Daldy Street sits adjacent to the heart of the marine industry (Westhaven Marina, the largest marina in the hemisphere). The industrial history of the site and the marine surroundings have had significant impact on the design of the space and are visible throughout.
PLAYGROUNDS An iconic symbol of the area known as the Tank Farm on Auckland’s waterfront is being honoured in new outdoor installations, as part of the Daldy Street upgrade. Exciting new play areas add a sense of fun and rich education value for users, be they young or old with water play devices and two super-cool slides descending from a 7 metre high silo. The first ‘Waterplay’ tank is situated adjacent to the Auckland Fish Market on Daldy Street and incorporates a 7.6 metre high tank which is also used to store water for irrigation surrounding the park. The tanks have been constructed using steel, recovered wharf timber, and concrete reflecting the former industrial site. The second play area is designed by LandLAB and has a series of tank elements which reference the sites unique marine and industrial heritage. The tank interventions provide a programmed series of play and social opportunities within the overall park framework. They incorporate recycled and repurposed elements including bulk liquid storage tanks, steel and hardwood wharf timbers. The slide tank in the playground features a reference to the Matariki lunar calendar developed in collaboration with Ngati Whatua. This narrative references the historical association of Wynyard Quarter as a place for the gathering of resources and kaimoana from the Waitemata Harbour.
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MATERIALS
TIMBER has been used for the bridges, seating and detailing. As a building material it is good choice as it is a natural and renewable resource. Not only does timber store carbon through its life cycle but it is recyclable. The production and processing of timber products uses less energy than most other building materials, in turn resulting in fewer emissions into the atmosphere.
The construction has many sustainable design features including use of recycled concrete and aggregates, a low-impact storm-water system which treats run-off from the street, park and adjacent development sites, new energy efficient LED street lighting and control systems, the reuse of industrial archaeology recovered from the site and sustainably sourced timber and low embodied energy materials. The original site where Daldy Street sits was covered in a large concrete hardstand associated with Mobil’s previous occupation of the site. To minimize waste going to land-fill and to refer to its previous use, some of the material has been retained and used on site. This recovered and recycled concrete slab paving became known by the contractors as the ‘Barney Rubble’ area.
BASALT is a dark-coloured, fine grained, igneous rock, composed mainly of plagioclase and pyroxene minerals. Basalt is used for a wide variety of purposes. Crushed basalt is used for road bases, concrete aggregate, asphalt pavement aggregate, railroad ballast and as a filter stone in draining and in this case the rain gardens. Recycled basalt kerb stones were recovered from Auckland Council yards and incorporated as a feature, set amongst a special mix of Aggrok, developed specically for the site to incorporate a larger shell component in reference to its geographical lacation. AGGROK is a unique environmental stabilised aggregate with a commitment to sustainability. It was specifically developed to provide an eco-friendly organic solution for modern urban landscapes. With its natural aesthetic, aggrok is ideal for footpaths, pedestrian or recreational areas, parks and reserves, botanical gardens, trails and permeable surfaces around trees or any environment where a natural feel is desired. CONCRETE. Former hardstand areas have been retained within the project and existing concrete slabs associated with its industrial use have been re-used as paving. Precast concrete offers a range of important, inherent material characteristics, being: 1. durable – being inorganic it will not rot or burn or need treating with chemicals to maintain it 2. inert – it can maximise industrial ecology and does not release harmful substances such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) 3. flexible – it can be engineered to give different properties and can replicate natural materials so that their finite reserves are protected n long-lasting and durable. 4. recyclable – it can be made of recycled materials and the concrete itself can also be recycled.
CORTEN STEEL is otherwise known as weathering steel. Weathering steels are high strength, low alloy, weldable structural steels that possess good weather resistance in many atmospheric conditions without the need for protective coatings. Color of patina varies due to numerous factors. On exposure to air, a protective rust patina forms that adheres to the surface of the steel. This layer causes the rate of corrosion to slow so that after 2-5 years, corrosion almost ceases. Requirement for the formation of the protective corrosion product layer is regular wetting and curing of the surface. Long wet periods may prevent the formation of the protective layer.
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VEGETATION TREES
Plants were sourced by Ngati Whatua o Orakei and symbolise the areas connection with the coastal environment. The planting in the rain garden withstands damp areas and helps filter pollution out of the water as it drains into the wastewater. (www. architecturenow) All the planting is native apart from the six citrus in the circular planters, and the grass that is planted is Tall fescue. Originally the plan was to continue on the exotic planting of the Victoria park area however this was changed to a native planting scheme which Ngati Whatua o Orakei had significant input in as well as supplying a lot of the plants. (www.architecturenow) The Planting in the rain gardens references the previous history of the area by incorporating coastal planting that would have been found in the area, and the overall tones tie in the elemental coastal theme of the park and help to minimise pollution by filtering the runoff before it gets into the stormwater. (www.architecturenow) The variety of plants are quite often found naturalised in similar environments especially in nutrient rich coastal and estuarine areas. The combination of native Flax, Kowhai, and Oioi is a nod to South island ecologies where the presence of these species signified arable soil. All the plants found on the site were newly planted as the site was completely bare beforehand Most species and smaller planting was sourced from Ngati Whatua o Orakei nursery however there was one mature 30 year old pohutukawa that had been transplanted from Tauranga’s waterfront in 2012 to the newly developed Daldy street. (www. waterfrontauckland) There are concerns about the longevity of some of the planting, although a lot of the planting species deal well with harsher conditions in their natural habitiats, there are some dominating species such as Oioi, Maori sedge and Meuhlenbeckia complexa that in years to come will threaten the diversity of the planting and over crowd some of the slower growing varieties. There will also be significant changes to the moisture levels which will impact the plants health, with a mixture of irrigation and heavy rain the gardens have the ability to become waterlogged threatening the more arid varieties.
Titoki – Alectryon Excelus Pohutukawa – Metrosideros Excelsa Nikau – Rhopolastylus Sapida Puriri – Vitex Lucens Karaka – Corynocarpus Laevigatus Kowhai – Sophora Macrophylla Kohe Kohe – Dysoxylum Spectabile Taraire – Beilschmeida Tarairi Putaputaweka – Carpodeus Serratus
SHRUBS/GROUNDCOVERS Oioi – Apodasmia similis Purei – Carex dissita Rautahi – Carex Geminata Maori Sedge – Carex Maorica Turutu – Dianella Nigra Mikoikoi – Libertia Grandiflora Wharariki – Phormium Cookianum Pohuehue – Meuhlenbeckia Complexa/ axillaris Panakenake – Pratia
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THE VISION The vision Is for Auckland’s waterfront to be the leading location of sustainable urban transformation and renewal In Auckland and across New Zealand. Objectives: • Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and develop a low carbon precinct • Increase resiliency of the built and natural environment and of the community • Design and develop the waterfront public land according to sustainable design principles • Identify opportunities to restore and enhance environmental quality • Develop a diverse business and residential community • Manage travel demand and prioritise and promote sustainable transport • Create an authentic waterfront experience respecting cultural and heritage values (waterfrontauckland/sustainabilty,2013)
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BIBLIOGRAPHY https://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/getmedia/bb3f86ae-a471-4656-85fa5e01797e5a74/Urband-Design-Concepts-for-WQ http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/waterfront-auckland/pages/newspage/?ID=210 http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/sustainability/ http://architecturenow.co.nz/articles/daldy-street-park/ http://landlab.co.nz/ http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/waterfront-auckland/what-s-next/current-projects/wynyard-common/ http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/waterfront-auckland/pages/newspage/?ID=204 http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/waterfront-auckland/pages/newspage/?ID=208 http://www.waterfrontauckland.co.nz/waterfront-auckland/pages/newspage/?ID=210 http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1528465 http://architectureau.com/articles/daldy-street-park/ http://landlab.co.nz/category/uncategorized/page/2/ http://landlab.co.nz/ http://www.360urban.co.nz/aggrok/ http://www.wynyard-quarter.co.nz/news/seven-metre-high-slide http://www.corten.com/flat-sheets.html http://www.residentialshippingcontainerprimer.com/CorTen http://www.360urban.co.nz/aggrok/ http://geology.com/rocks/basalt.shtml http://www.boral.com.au/TimberFlooring/sustainability.asp http://www.timspec.co.nz/Learning-Centre/Sustainability-7170.htm http://ecc.co.nz/digest/case-studies/74-daldy-street-park http://www.iguzzini.com/Outdoor_floodlights
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SUSTAINABILITY HISTORICAL SEMINAR
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SUSTAINABLE LARGE PARKS: ECOLOGICAL DESIGN OR DESIGNER ECOLOGY? Nina-Marie Lister Large parks are complex systems,1 and as such, parks with an area in excess of 500 acres within contemporary metropolitan regions warrant special consideration and study. In particular, large parks pose specific challenges for long-term sustainability in terms of design, planning, management, and maintenance, principally due to their actual and potential biodiversity coupled with the complexity inherent in their ecology and program. Indeed, “large- ness” is a singularly important criterion that demands a different approach to design, planning, management, and maintenance—one that explicitly pro- vides the capacity for resilience in the face of long-term adaptation to change, and thus for ecological, cultural, and economic viability. This chapter explores such an approach to design as a response to issues of complexity and sustainability in the context of “large.” In parks of smaller area in urbanizing landscapes, ecological structures and functions are often significantly altered through habitat fragmentation, reduction and simplification, partial restoration, or even complete re-creation. Such areas usually require intensive management to maintain the ecology in place. Although ecological considerations do play into the design (and its contingent planning and management activities) in smaller parks, I suggest that this is designer ecology—an ecology that is vital, indeed essential, for educational, aesthetic, spiritual, and other reasons. Yet this is largely a symbolic gesture provided by such parks’ designers to recall or represent nature in some capacity (see, for example, Toronto’s Yorkville Park, by Martha Schwartz, FIGS. 1, 2). Designer ecology, while valid and desirable in urban contexts for many reasons, is not operational ecology; it does not program, facilitate, or ultimately permit the emergence and evolution of self-organizing, resilient ecological systems—a basic requirement for long-term sustainability.2 “Such areas usually require intensive management to maintain the ecology in place. Although ecological considerations do play into the design (and its con- tingent planning and management activities) in smaller parks, I suggest that this is designer ecology—an ecology that is vital, indeed essential, for educational, aesthetic, spiritual, and other reasons. Yet this is largely a symbolic gesture provided by such parks’ designers to recall or represent nature in some capacity” We ought to appreciate the role of designer ecology in small parks for the reasons stated above, as well as for punctuating and accentuating human agency in landscape. From an operational ecological perspective, however, smaller parks cannot reasonably be self-sustaining, nor thus resilient ecosystems, unless they are functionally connected through robust landscape link- ages to other similar areas. Smaller parks typically have simpler programs that are less likely to conflict with ecological goals of conservation and protection. Although smaller parks may have any number of interested stakeholders, design, planning, and management processes continue largely to rely on traditional approaches using discipline-based teams of experts; they are predicated on certainty and control—two characteristics not associated with complex-ecological systems. 100
But large parks are a different matter. Their size, coupled with a diversity and complexity of ecology and program, poses unique challenges for design and specific opportunities for sustainability. For example, they may contain a variety of habitats, some at odds in terms of natural evolution: fast-flowing streams, supporting trout spawning, may eventually become stagnant warm- water ponds if beaver are allowed to do their work. The trout will die out while the beaver flourish. Which is the “correct” state for such a park? If sustainability is the goal, both are valid, but not at once. Design of large parks with conflicting habitats and uses calls for a long-term, bird’s-eye view of the whole system, usually by a multidisciplinary team of stakeholders and designers working in collaboration, rather than domination by expertise. Specifically, these parks demand an approach I have generalized as adaptive ecological design. Long-term sustainability demands the capacity for resilience3—the ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health—and therefore, for adaptation. This emerging approach, with some reference to the ecological science on which it is based, is postulated as a response to sustainability for large parks. “Design of large parks with conflicting habitats and uses calls for a long-term, bird’seye view of the whole system, usually by a multidisciplinary team of stakeholders and designers working in collaboration, rather than domination by expertise. Specifically, these parks demand an approach I have generalized as adaptive ecological design. Long-term sustainability demands the capacity for resilience3—the ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health—and therefore, for adaptation. This emerging approach, with some reference to the ecological science on which it is based, is postulated as a response to sustainability for large parks.” Most design, planning, and management in an environmental context is based on the assumption that more knowledge leads to certainty, and therefore “Immediately after a disturbance, biodiversity at many scales is critical: the abundance, distribution, and diversity of an ecosystem’s structures (e.g., species) and functions (e.g., nutrient cycling) determine its ability to regenerate and reorganize itself, and influence its future pathway.”
ecosystems, or cultural-natural landscapes that characterize this confluence? Despite an emerging discourse in the theory of adaptive management and related literatures—the ecosystem approach,8 ecosystem health,9 designed experiments,10 collaborative environmental planning,11 etc.—there are few tangible projects. One early prototype of adaptive design in the context of large parks was the design competition held in 2000 for Downsview Park in Toronto. The brief explicitly called for an interpretation of ecology consistent with an adaptive, selforganizing, open system, and at least four of the five finalist teams responded with designs that were crafted using language and program resonant with this condition.12 “Emergent Ecologies,” proposed by a team led by James Corner and Stan Allen, depicted an explicitly adaptive plan, which included “seeded evolution” of various habitat “nests,” placed in a circuit of both organizational and programmatic ecologies (FIGS. 3, 4). Corner went on to further develop this idea with his team’s winning entry for Fresh Kills Park in New York.13 Yet progress has been slow outside of major design competitions; there has been little substantive exploration of adaptive design, in practice or in empirically supported theory. “Emergent Ecologies,” proposed by a team led by James Corner and Stan Allen, depicted an explicitly adaptive plan, which included “seeded evolution” of various habitat “nests,” placed in a circuit of both organizational and programmatic ecologies. Corner went on to further develop this idea with his team’s winning entry for Fresh Kills Park in New York.
Over the past two decades, there has been a gradual but fundamental shift in the way we understand ecosystems (and thus landscapes) in terms of their structure and function. The perception of ecosystems as closed, hierarchical, stable, and deterministic structures functioning according to a linear model of development has been replaced by the recognition that living systems are open, complex, selforganizing, and subject to sudden but regular periods of dynamic change that are, to some degree, unpredictable.6 Over the past two decades, there has been a gradual but fundamental shift in the way we understand ecosystems (and thus landscapes) in terms of their structure and function. The perception of ecosystems as closed, hierarchical, stable, and deterministic structures functioning according to a linear model of development has been replaced by the recognition that living systems are open, complex, selforganizing, and subject to sudden but regular periods of dynamic change that are, to some degree, unpredictable.6 The implications of this change in understanding have been variously considered for the planning, design, and management of natural areas and more recently for urban ecosystems.7 How might an adaptive, systems-based, ecological design approach be applied to urban and urbanizing
In the context of design, planning, management, and maintenance of large parks, where human recreational needs and creative design goals may conflict with conservation priorities, we must develop complex, layered, flexible, and adaptive design responses. Cities across North America are revitalizing their post-industrial areas, often through the creation of large urban or exurban parks; there is thus an urgent need to consider how designing eco- logically, and therefore adaptively, might influence both the art and science of making parks. Furthermore, decisionmakers must reflect critically on the dynamic intersection of both the behavior of landscape itself and the ways in which designers, planners, and managers work. Such a reflection must necessarily include an analysis of tools, techniques, and strategies for adaptive, ecological design. Within this social dimension of ecological design, there is space to reconsider the role of the designer and his or her interaction with an interdisciplinary and collaborative design team and an interested public. Indeed, the learning potential inherent in the design process in an adaptive context for sustainability may have much to offer as an emergent strategy in large park planning, design, and management. Furthermore, decision-makers must reflect critically on the dynamic intersection of both the behavior of landscape itself and the ways in which designers, planners, and managers work.
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Influenced principally by ecology, the environmental sciences, environmental planning, architecture, and land- scape studies, ecological design is one of several rapidly evolving (theoretical and practical) approaches to more sustainable, humane, and environmentally responsible development. It may also be considered a critical approach to navigating the interface between culture and nature. In the broadest sense, eco- logical design emerges from the dynamic relationship between ecology and decision making. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan described ecological design as a hinge that connects culture and nature, allowing humans to adapt and integrate nature’s processes with human creations.14 In modern industrialized societies, human culture and nature are treated as separate realms, yet their interface offers fertile ground for the creation of new, hybridized natural-cultural ecologies and the rehabilitation and rediscovery of others. Ecological design is inspired by the nexus of these worlds and the urgent need to blur the boundary between them; it seizes on the creative tensions between them and may offer insights to “living lightly” with the land. More important, it may also provide a learning framework in which to renegotiate, remediate, and reconsider our relationships to the diverse ecologies that characterize the contemporary urbanizing landscape. (Examples include reclaimed brown- fields that, once contaminated, now support heavy-metal-tolerant populations of grasses or recreated wetlands for stormwater management and nature tourism; emerging Great Lakes ecosystems now dominated by introduced species, including salmon that were never expected to survive; or artificial prairie-savannahs, facilitated by urban deer that browse out undergrowth and maintain a tall and groomed tree canopy.) Applied to the current metropolitan landscape, ecological design has particular relevance to large parks and their constituent ecologies and various stewards.
Outside of several major park design competitions (Downsview, Fresh Kills, and most recently, Orange County), ecological design is principally concerned with the realistic emulation of ecological form, function, and where possible, process. As an outgrowth of (and to some degree, a fusion between) landscape architecture, ecology, environmental planning, and the building-science aspects of architecture, there is a distinctive functional emphasis in the discipline.17 Ironically, aesthetics has not been a priority in a discipline that bears the label of “design”; until recently, landscape architecture has been more concerned with applied ecology for reactive remediation—a phenomenon well documented by Corner.18 The traditional practice of landscape architecture, along with related environmental technologist professions concerned with ecological restoration, have been the progenitors of the new discipline of ecological design, largely as a response to global environmental crises. This is evident in the works of McHarg, Michael Hough, John Tillman Lyle, and others who emphasize that good design should follow the dictates of nature’s form and process, often at the expense of creativity and originality.19 As adaptive ecological design evolves, and as its practitioners seek to define their disciplinary roles, several are beginning to argue fervently for a new creative space for the practice, calling for reconciliation of falsely polarized aspects of art and science, culture and nature.20 “good design should follow the dictates of nature’s form and process, often at the expense of creativity and originality.” Despite significant new understandings in ecology over the past twenty years, the field is still largely characterized by a deep schism. As a discipline, the science of ecology is still in polarity: divided between reductionist and holistic perspectives, largely at the expense of a nondualist, integrative systems perspective. This polarity exists in practice and in theory, and is well substantiated in the ecological “ecological design is one of several rapidly evolving (theoretical and practical) approaches to more literature (e.g., the conflict between species and population-scale studies and whole-system studies such as sustainable, humane, and environmentally responsible development. It may also be considered a critical ecosystem energetics).21 Still, the dominant interpretation and application of modern ecological science approach to navigating the interface between culture and nature.” is reductionist: decision makers routinely invoke science- based “environmental management,” founded In these ways, ecological design is a vital approach within the broader framework of sustainability. For on the notion that nature can be counted, measured, and taken apart, a mechanical entity not unlike Newexample, Ann Dale’s widely recognized framework is based on the reconciliation of three imperatives: ton’s outdated notion of the clockwork universe. By extension, conventional wisdom says that nature can the ecological, the social, and the economic.15 Three aspects of ecological design may offer opportunities to some degree be predicted and controlled, and for sustainable design, planning, management, and maintenance of large parks. First, I highlight current The ability of ecosystems to recover, reorganize, and adapt in the face of regular change, rather than understandings from systems ecology that essentially amount to a reconceptualization of ecology and its stability, is critical to their survival. The essence of this primordial ability is resilience. Biological diversity processes, the result of which demands an adaptive approach to design. Second, I explore the substance of is vital to ecosystems as the basis of resilience, and of the ability of an ecosystem to buffer itself from being ecological design, characterizing it as adaptive, flexible, integrative, resilient, and responsive in approach, pushed into another (potentially less desirable) state, and to regenerate itself following a systemic shift or and I reflect on what this means for large parks. Third, I consider that such an approach to design is also a other disturbance. Biodiversity could be considered analogous to a library of information (some recorded process for engaging the social dimension and may foster the rediscovery of the culture-nature interface— long ago, and some only now being written) that provides not only a wide range of possible pathways for an imperative emphasized in Dale’s framework for sustainability. the future development of life but also learned repertoires for responding to environmental change and How is ecological design a relevant context for large parks in the contemporary urban landscape? disturbance Ecological design is usually invoked as a means to mimic, model, and even replicate nature’s processes and “The ability of ecosystems to recover, reorganize, and adapt in the face of regular change, rather than functions—in the work of Laurie Olin, or in Ian McHarg’s Staten Island Study, for example; it is therefore stability, is critical to their survival. The essence of this primordial ability is resilience. Biological diversity considered a surrogate model for sustainability.16 In this sense, ecological design has been associated with is vital to ecosystems as the basis of resilience” “modeling nature”; but this comes with the risk of ecological myopia, in that too much emphasis on strict C. S. Holling’s dynamic cycle of ecosystem development is a foundation of the systems view of ecology, replication of nature’s processes leaves little room for creative synthesis of cultural and natural elements of which considers ecological organisms and their relationships at multiple scales in time and space (FIG. complex ecologies. Yet there is a far richer interpretation of ecological design, wherein nature is an analog 7).32 (Studies include, for example, analyses of ecosystem energetics or the energy flows between for design, and through such inspired design, a metaphor for human learning. This implies room for a trophic levels in a food web.) Living systems evolve discontinuously and intermittently. Following a more creative design practice allowing for synthesis with human culture, aesthetics, and ingenuity. And sudden disturbance, an ecosystem reorganizes to “renew” itself or regenerate to a similar or perhaps this is critical, reflective space when considering large urban parks. different state—one that may be more or less desirable to the humans that inhabit it. Immediately “Ecological design is usually invoked as a means to mimic, model, and even replicate nature’s processes after a disturbance, biodiversity at many scales is critical: the abundance, distribution, and diversity of and functions” an ecosystem’s structures (e.g., species) and functions (e.g., nutrient cycling) determine its ability to regenerate and reorganize itself, and influence its future pathway.33 Biodiversity is vital to the normal, 102healthy functioning of ecosystems
because the information it contains and the functions it serves constitute the key elements that determine how an ecosystem will self-organize. In effect, biodiversity forms the palette of future possibilities for an ecosystem.34 Most design, planning, and management in an environmental
context is based on the assumption that more knowledge leads to certainty, and therefore “Immediately after a disturbance, biodiversity at many scales is critical: the abundance, distribution, and diversity of an ecosystem’s structures (e.g., species) and functions (e.g., nutrient cycling) determine its ability to regenerate and reorganize itself, and influence its future pathway.” predictability and the success of the design or plan. Although this is resoundingly true in certain deterministic science and engineering applications, it is not the case with complex living systems. We cannot predict how ecosystems will evolve, change, and behave because they are complex systems that are inherently unpredictable. Of course this does not mean we should fall into the trap of postmodern nihilism and give up trying to design, plan, and man- age; rather, we must accept and embrace change as a normal part of life and, through our designs and plans, adapt to it in a more flexible and responsive manner.35 “We cannot predict how ecosystems will evolve, change, and behave because they are complex systems that are inherently unpredictable” This recent view of ecosystems, and of nature more generally, as open, self-organizing, holistic, dynamic, complex, and uncertain has significant implications for ecological design and other applications in planning and management.36 We can never determine with precision the consequences of our actions. The current and widely accepted concept of “environmental management” is an oxymoron, because we can never truly “manage” living systems. Instead, we can refocus our energies on those human activities that provide the context for the selforganizing processes in ecosystems. This implies a profound change in environmental decision making and has concomitant implications for design, planning, and management of ecosystems in general and large parks in particular. If uncertainty and regular change are inevitable, then we must learn to be flexible and adaptable. Although there is a steadily growing literature on “If uncertainty and regular change are inevitable, then we must learn to be flexible and adaptable”
what has been called “adaptive management,”37 there is little empirical and functional understanding of what this means in practice. Given the importance of multiple perspectives at various ecosystem scales (essentially a systems approach), one of the first steps toward flexible, adaptive, and responsive design, planning, or management is to use a diversity of approaches.38 In general, this means emphasizing small-scale and explicitly experimental approaches that are safeto-fail, rather than fail-safe.39 Because ecosystems may change in any number of ways, there may be an infinite number of possibilities for design (and ultimately, management). “Good” ecological design requires a diversity of tools, techniques, and methods. Learning becomes a central goal, leading ideally to continual improvement in design, planning, and management—to long-term adaptation (FIG. 8). “one of the first steps toward flexible, adaptive, and responsive design, planning, or management is to use a diversity of approaches” Thus, in developing best practices for ecological design we might consider demonstration projects that emphasize “learning by doing”40 and “designed experiments.”41 For example, the Huron Park, a medium-sized (325 acres) community cooperative project in Waterloo, Ontario, approved a master plan explicitly designed to accommodate native and non-native species in various and naturally conflicting ecological scenarios, some of which would inevitably disappear, being outcompeted by others for nutrients or perhaps management resources.42 Such projects should be small enough that if they are not successful, they can fail safely, without endangering an entire community, ecosystem, watershed, or habitat. “Failures” or mistakes may provide experience that can be used in the future. In this way, the “surprising” nature of eco- systems can be turned into a learning opportunity rather than a liability. As Kai Lee observes, “experiments often bring surprises, but if resource management is recognized to be inherently uncertain, the surprises become opportunities to learn rather than failures to predict.”43 I am not aware, however, of any parks planning or management branch that is paid to fail. In the pursuit of accountability, our public agencies consider mistakes or perceived failure a reason to cease funding and remove those in charge—managers and designers who take with them any record of learning, leaving the organization likely to repeat design mistakes rather than learn from them.44 Of course good ecological design, such as that required for the long-term sustainability of large parks, must be rooted in rigorous empirically testable science, some appropriately reductionist; it must draw continuously on new knowledge in biology and ecology, among other related disciplines. But adaptive, resilient, and responsive design must also proceed on a broader scale, linked to experience as well as research. Learning through experimentation and action also requires local knowledge for context, as well as field-trained specialists with a range of expertise and research. Fundamentally, adaptive design demands a stronger connection between knowledge and action. “Learning by doing” implies profound changes to our tradition of design, planning, and management, especially in the context of parks. It is still widely assumed that with enough research and knowledge, ecological systems will somehow “Of course good ecological design, such as that required for the long-term sustainability of large parks, must be rooted in rigorous empirically testable science”
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difference there can be no respect for diversity, either cultural or ecological, and no reconciliation of Dale’s imperatives. And this puts us, as designers, some distance from embracing sustainability. Yet much of institutionalized planning—the basis for a considerable portion of architectural and landscape design—is still rooted in the science- based deterministic tradition. Ecological science is an essential tool, but when employed without contextual knowledge or social values, science is an insufficient basis for park design. Science-driven bureaucratic approaches nonetheless abound in large parks management and in the implementation of designs and master plans. (Indeed this approach characterizes the National Parks systems in North America.) Planning and design function as top-down, expert- driven, rational activities, relying on management through control. Yet in its social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions, the “nature” of our large parks has very much to do with socially constructed landscape values, and this must be reflected in the design, planning, and management of our parks. Local people should collectively decide which of the many possible futures they want, attainable through choices, trade-offs, trial and error, learning by doing, and flexible management. The designer’s role in such a process becomes one of wise facilitator. “Local people should collectively decide which of the many possible futures they want, attainable through choices, trade-offs, trial and error, learning by doing, and flexible management. The designer’s role in such a process becomes one of wise facilitator.” Design processes can be potent agents of change. In becoming more open, flexible, and receptive to a diversity of perspectives, and adaptive and responsive to local conditions, they are potentially powerful vehicles for shared, experiential learning by their participants. In several design exercises that have involved a diversity of professions, a range of experts, and meaningful collaboration with local people, I have seen indicators of transformative change among the design team and community members alike. For example, in community meetings leading to Toronto’s 965-acre waterfront Lake Ontario Park, bird enthusiasts have fought bitterly with environmentalists who want wind turbines; ecological restorationists want nonnative cormorant colonies culled, while others see them as rightful occupants of the park; dog owners, roller-bladers, and joggers have opposed the closing of trails to protect rare plants or breeding birds, while nudists have demanded more clothing-option- al beaches. These and other seemingly irreconcilable differences have some- times been resolved, but more often, simply voiced, heard, understood, and eventually
The potential for ecological design to create viable large parks is significant: it lies in the explicit recognition of resilience and adaptation as critical system parameters, and through this, in its ability to elucidate and reconcile the social, ecological, and economic imperatives necessary for long-term sustainability. As a learning process that is adaptive, responsive, and inclusive, ecological design is more broadly insightful in rediscovering, reaffirming, recreating, and reconsidering our place in nature and within contemporary landscapes. The tapestry of the contemporary landscape is complex, woven from many threads, and we need large-scale, responsible ecological design, punctuated by pockets of inspired designer ecologies. The resulting hybrid ecologies of our large parks will likely be at once resonant and dissonant, familiar and unknown, anticipated but unimagined. The sustainable large park, and the landscape mosaic in which it lies, cannot be realized through dialectic argument but rather by creative dialogue; it does not serve public space to struggle for either McHargian ecological determinism or postmodern relativism in park design. In learning our way to sustainable design, we must make brave choices. Our designs for large parks must reflect both ecological design and designer ecology, engaged in a relationship of complexity and diversity, and confident in their inevitable uncertainty. This is a key challenge for ecological design and to the successful design and long-term viability of large parks in the contemporary urbanizing landscapes in which we increasingly dwell. “The potential for ecological design to create viable large parks is significant: it lies in the explicit recognition of resilience and adaptation as critical system parameters, and through this, in its ability to elucidate and reconcile the social, ecological, and economic imperatives necessary for long-term sustainability.” “The sustainable large park, and the landscape mosaic in which it lies, cannot be realized through dialectic argument but rather by creative dialogue” “Our designs for large parks must reflect both ecological design and designer ecology, engaged in a relationship of complexity and diversity, and confident in their inevitable uncertainty.” NOTES I am grateful to James Corner for vision and encouragement, and to Julia Czerniak and Linda Pollak for inspired dialogue, provocative collaboration, and insightful comments on an earlier draft. Funding for the background research for this chapter was provided through a Faculty of Community Services’ SRC Grant at Ryerson University. 1. “Complex systems” are interconnected networks of processes (or functions) and structures (or elements) whose behavior is generally described as nonlinear, unpredictable, dynamic, and adaptive, and is characterized by the regular emergence of new phenomena and the ability to self-organize. In ecological systems, “complexity” implies a balance between chaos and order within any living system; as such, living systems are said to thrive on the “edge of chaos” or, as Robert Ulanowicz has termed this, “the window of vitality” (conversation with the author, University of Waterloo, 1996); for example, the human body temperature has a very narrow band of optimum performance at 36 degrees C; even a small change in temperature can put the body into a chaotic or disordered state. 2. “Sustainability” here means the inherent balance between social-cultural, economic, and ecological domains that is necessary for humankind’s long-term surviving and thriving on Earth. Ann Dale, in At the Edge: Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001), has eloquently referred to this balance as a necessary act of “reconciliation” between personal, economic, and ecological imperatives that underlie the primordial natural
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and cultural capitals on earth. With this definition,
Dale has set the responsibility for sustainability squarely in the domain of human activity, and appropriately removed it from the ultimately impossible realm of managing “the environment” as an object separate from humans— the latter is the conventional implication of “sustainable development.” In this chapter, I use the term “management” in the context of Dale’s definition of sustainability; that is, in the context of managing human activities within the environment, rather than the environment as object. 3. “Resilience” is used here in the ecological context, as a term developed by the Canadian ecologist C. S. (Buzz) Holling at the University of British Columbia in the mid-1980s. In the general ecological sense, resilience refers to the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and absorb to some degree the effects of change, and following these change events, return to a recognizable steady state (or states). These change events (which Holling has referred to in the vernacular as “surprises”), while usually normal ecosystem dynamics, are also unpredictable, in that they cause sudden disruption to a system: for example, forest fires, floods, pest outbreaks, etc. More specifically, resilience can also mean the rate at which an ecosystem returns to a single steady or routinely cyclic state following a sudden change. The ability of the system to withstand sudden change assumes that behavior of a system remains within the stable domain that contains this steady state in the first place. However, when an ecosystem shifts from one stability domain to another (called “reorganization” via a “bifurcation” or “flip” in system states), a more specific measure of ecosystem dynamics is needed: that of “ecological resilience,” which in this context is a measure of the amount of change or disruption that is required to move a system from one state to another, and thus, to a different state being maintained by a different set of functions and structures than the former. Holling’s work in resilience has been instrumental
to ecosystem managers and ecologists alike in exploring the paradoxes inherent within living systems—the tensions between stability and perturbation, constancy and change, predictability and unpredictability—and the implications of these for management. For a summary account of Holling’s work on resilience, see Lance Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds., Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002). 4. See also Julia Czerniak, “Legibility and Resilience,” in this volume. 5. See also John Beardsley, “Conflict and Erosion: The Contemporary Public Life of Large Parks,” in this volume. 6. See, for example, C. S. Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems: Local Surprise and Global Change,” in William Clark and R. Ted Munn, eds., Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 292–320; Gunderson and Holling, eds., Panarchy; and David Waltner- Toews, James Kay, and Nina-Marie Lister, eds., The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability (New York: Columbia University Press, in press). 7. For the former, see Gary K. Meffe, et al., Ecosystem Management: Adaptive Community-Based Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002); for the latter, see Alexander Felson and Steward Pickett, “Designed Experiments: New Approaches to Studying Urban Ecosystems,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3, no. 10 (2005): 549–56. 8. Waltner-Toews et al., eds., The Ecosystem Approach. 9. Ibid. 55 SUSTAINABLE LARGE PARKS 10. Felson and Pickett, “Designed Experiments.” 11. John Randolph, Environmental Land Use Planning and Management (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2004). 12. Discussed in detail by Julia Czerniak, ed., Downsview Park Toronto (Munich and Cambridge, MA: Prestel and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2002). 13. See Linda Pollak, “Matrix Landscape, Construction of Identity in the Large Park,” and Czerniak, “Legibility and Resilience,” both in this volume. 14. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan, Ecological Design (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 201. 15. Dale, At the Edge. 16. See for example Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired 105
by Nature (New York: William Morrow, 1997), 308; and Ian McHarg and Fritz Steiner, eds., To Heal the Earth: The Selected Writings of Ian McHarg (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1998), 381. 17. See, for example, Timothy Beatley, Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000), 491; William B. Honachefsky, Ecologically Based Municipal Land Use Planning (New York: Lewis, 1999), 256; Frederick Steiner, The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1991), 356; and Fred Stitt, ed., Ecological Design Handbook: Sustainable Strategies for Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Design, and Planning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999), 467. 18. James Corner, “Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity,” in George Thompson and Frederick Steiner, eds., Ecological Design and Planning (New York: Wiley, 1997), 81–108, and James Corner, “Recovering Landscape as a Critical Cultural Practice,” in James Corner, ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 287. 19. See Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (New York: Wiley, 1969), 198; Michael Hough, Cities and Natural Processes (New York: Routledge, 1995); and John Tillman Lyle, Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, and Natural Resources (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999), 279. 20. See, for example, Louise Mozingo, “The Aesthetics of Ecological Design: Seeing Science as Culture,”
Landscape Journal 16, no. 1 (1997): 46–59; Corner, “Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity” and “Recovering Landscape as a Critical Cultural Practice”; Charles Mann, “Three Trees,” Harvard Design Magazine 10 (2000): 31–35; and more recently, Mohsen Mostafavi and Ciro Najle, eds., Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (London: Architectural Associates, 2003), and Charles Waldheim, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). 21. Explored in detail in NinaMarie Lister, “A Systems Approach to Biodiversity Conservation Planning,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 49, no. 2/3 (1998): 123–55. 22. See, for example, Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems”; Carl Walters, Adaptive Management of Renewable Resources (New York: Macmillan, 1986); C. S. Holling, David Schindler, Brian Walker, and Jonathan Roughgarden, “Biodiversity in the Functioning of Ecosystems: An Ecological Primer and Synthesis,” in Charles Perrings et al., eds., Biodiversity Loss (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44–83; James Kay, “A Non-equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity,” Environmental Management 15, no. 4 (1991): 483–95; and James Kay and Eric Schneider, “Embracing Complexity: The Challenge of the Ecosystem Approach,” Alternatives Journal 20, no. 3 (1994): 32–38. 23. Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems,” and Walters, Adaptive Management. 24. Frederick H. Bormann and Gene E. Likens, Patterns and Process in a Forested Ecosystem (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1979). 25. Nina-Marie Lister and James Kay, “Celebrating Diversity: Adaptive Planning and Biodiversity Conservation,” in S. Bocking, ed., Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas, and Action (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2000), 189–218. 26. James Kay, Henry Regier, Michelle Boyle, and George Francis, “An Ecosystem Approach for Sustainability: Addressing the Challenge of Complexity,” Futures 31 (1999): 721–42. 27. Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems.” 28. Prior to European contact, much of the eastern Sydney peninsula was vegetated with Eastern Suburbs Banskia Scrub species (ESBS), which are primarily comprised of various banksias, heath-type shrubs, grasses, and sedges, typically found on older, deep sandy soils in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, southward to Botany Bay. Today less than one percent of the original ESBS survives in isolated remnants, including four identified remnants within the Centennial Parklands—all of which have been modified over time by the introduction of non-native trees and grasses. The ESBS ecology has been formally listed as an Endangered Ecological Community in Australia. See http://www.cp.nsw.gov.au/data/assets/pdf_file/718/ remnant_ bushland.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2006). 29. http://discoversydney.com.au/parks/ centennial.html (accessed Oct. 13, 2006). 30. http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/ one?public_place_id=74 (accessed Oct. 13, 2006). 31. Lister, “A Systems Approach to Biodiversity Conservation Planning.” 32. Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems.” 33. Holling et al., “Biodiversity in the Functioning of Ecosystems.” 34. Lister, “A Systems Approach to Biodiversity Conservation Planning” and
Waltner-Toews et al., eds., The Ecosystem Approach. 35. Kay and Schnieder, “Embracing Complexity,” Lister and Kay, “Celebrating Diversity.” 36. See, for example, Bruce Mitchell, ed., Resource and Environmental Management in Canada, 4th ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004); Waltner-Toews et al., eds., The Ecosystem Approach. 37. See, for example, Gunderson and Holling, eds., Panarchy; Holling, “The Resilience of Terrestrial Ecosystems”; Carl Walters and C. S. Holling, “Large-Scale Management Experiments and Learning by Doing,” Ecology 71, no. 6, (1990): 2060–68; Kai Lee, Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (Washington, D.C.: Island Press,1993), 243; Meffe et al., Ecosystem Management; Walters, Adaptive Management; Waltner-Toews et al., eds., The Ecosystem Approach. 38. R. Edward Grumbine, “Reflections on ‘What Is Ecosystem Management?’” Conservation Biology 11, no. 1 (1997): 41–47; Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, “Adaptive Governance of Social- Ecological Systems,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30 (2005): 441–73. 39. Lee, Compass and Gyroscope; A. Felson and S. T. Pickett, “Designed Experiments: New Approaches to Studying Urban Ecosystems,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3, no. 10 (2005): 549–56. 40. Lee, Compass and Gyroscope. 41. Felson and Pickett, “Designed Experiments.” 42. Lister and Kay, “Celebrating Diversity.” 43. Lee, Compass and Gyroscope, 56. 44. This phenomenon is well documented in business and organizational literature, for example, in Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990), and is growing in the environmental management literature. See, for example, Francis Westley, “Governing Design: The Management of Social Systems and Ecosystems Management,” in Lance Gunderson et al., eds., Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 391–427. 45. Jim Woodhill, and Niels G. Röling, “The Second Wing of the Eagle: The Human Dimension in Learning Our Way to More Sustainable Futures,” in Niels G. Röling and M.
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Park Bos
Size: 1000 hectares Type: Public park Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Operated by: City Council Designer: Cornelis Van Eesteren Date of commission: 1923 Completion of Stage 1: 1937 Official naming: Park Bos, in 1942 Completion of Plan: 1964 Vegetative area: 700 hectares is natural forest Annual visits: 4.5 million people visiting Park Vos each year
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Designer :
Park Bos is a large park. It is comparable in size to Bois De Boulogne-Paris. The difference is that Park Bos is entirely artificially created. Today it is a real forest, but because it has been planned it has many facilities created for sports and leisure. A big attraction is De Heuvel (The Hill), and artificial mountain with a slope that is ideal for all kinds of winter sports. Some of the trees at the part are now 70 years old
Cornelis van Eesteren (4 July 1897, Alblasserdam - 21 February 1988, Amsterdam) was a prominent Dutch architect and urban planner. He worked for the Town Planning department of Amsterdam (1929–59) and was the chairman of the CIAM (1930-1947). Eesteren’s design was influenced by biologist Dr J P Thijsse He was assisted by landscape architect Jacopa Mulder
Sustainability : The land on which the park was created had been reclaimed from the sea. This made ecological considerations important. The Bos Park was the first major project on which an ecological approach was used. J P Thijsse used native plants to make a flower garden in Amstelveen on the edge of the Bos Park. In the main park, the 'form follows function' principle was used in several ways: native plants assisted the process of land reclamation; lakes, ponds, streams and ditches were part of the land drainage system; the form of the spaces was led by their use for a wide range of recreational activities. The plan therefore contains biological patterns, resulting from hydrological and ecological processes, and artificial patterns which derive from functional activities
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Economic
Similarities
It is also a major tourist attraction for Tweed Heads, just south of the Queensland and New South Wales border. The project has been developed to create a diverse, vibrant, culturally rich, recreational and tourism centrepiece for the Tweed Heads Town Centre. It is an exciting foreshore, parklands redevelopment project which will provide the impetus for critical economic revitalisation of Tweed Heads. This project is the culmination of extensive community consultation and thorough planning.(archdaily)
Daldy St and JEBH are both waterfront locations. Design features such as storm water management, rain gardens, swales were implemented in Daldy Street and Jack Evans Boat Harbour Both Daldy Street and JEBH were designed and built in stages All three sites use endemic planting Both sites use narrative as a key theme in their design All have space for public use Daldy St and JEBH are examples of Designer ecology
Differences
Size: Daldy Street: 14,493 sq m ( 1.4 hectares) JEBH: 43,000 sq m (4.3 hectares) Bos Amsterdam 1000 hectares Where JEBH was directly related to the harbour, Daldy Street is set apart from the seaside despite being part of the waterfront. JEBH is a traditional park, while Daldy Street is a green corridor urban link. Bos park implements natural landforms and water bodies to contend with storm water and surface runoff Bos park is split between public park and natural forest Bos Park is an example of ecological design
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JACK EVANS BOAT HARBOUR Team: Richards Council Client: Location: Year Completed: Budget: Project Area: 534m Awards: Project Winner
Lead Consultant – ASPECT Studios Civil and Structural Enginneers – Cardno Grogan Construction Project Management – Tweed Shire Tweed Shire Council Tweed Heads, NSW, Australia 2011 $8 Million AUS 4.3 Hectres (Land mass) N to S = 498m, E to W = 2013 CCAA Public Domain Awards – Best Overall 2013 CCAA Public Domain Awards – Precincts 2012 AILA National Awards – Design 2011 AILA NSW Awards – ‘The Medal’
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Scale 1:2000 112
WIDER CONTEXT Tweed River: Discovered by John Oxley in Oct 1823. North coast of NSW, about 6 km long . Supports a thriving fishing fleet, and the seafood is a local specialty offered in restaurants. A spit about 500–800 metres wide called "Letitia Spit" (named after the first ship to enter the river in July 1840) runs south for 2 km to Fingal Head. Fingal Head: Population of 575 people. The headland itself was made from a lava flow from the now extinct volcano. The rock composition in the area is mainly basalt or andesite. There are walking tracks all over this area. 500m offshore from the headland is Cook Island, a rocky un-inhabitated Island first chartered by James Cook in 1770. Made a marine reserve in 1998 and as such fishing is prohibited in the waters nearby. Since 1996 Fingal has hosted an annual surfing competitions for indigenous surfers. In 1878 a lighthouse, built as a sandstone construction in a round design, was inaugurated. The local aboriginal people were the Minjungbal, but the impact of white settlement meant they almost became wiped out by 1900. Coolangatta: Coolangatta, one of the earliest settlements in the Gold Coast, and its immediate neighbouring "Twin Town Tweed Heads have a shared economy.
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DIAGRAM
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RENDERINGS OF NEW DESIGN
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JEBH PARKLANDS INTRODUCTION
FUNCTION/CIRCULATION
Marking the transition between land, river, and sea, the Jack Evans Boat Harbour frames the shifting intertidal zone of a landscape in constant flux. Commissioned by the Tweed Shire Council, designed by ASPECT Studios, and brought into being by Multispan Australia, the new recreational and aquatic promenade has revitalised the Tweed Heads community, encouraging both tourists and locals to interact with the water around them. Representing a fusion of maritime/marine engineering, landscape architecture, civil, engineering, structural engineering, horticultural and ecological design, and environmental management, the project sought to resolve the coastal processes and understand and interpret the theory of sediment transport.In keeping with a project so in tune with nature, sustainability was a key concern. The architects utilised WSUD best practice storm water management principles to undertake extensive upgrades to the water catchment systems, including rain gardens, swales and Gross Pollution Traps to filter and treat water prior to release.
Concrete steps, terraces and platforms allow for interactive water-based play. A pedestrian-orientated promenade, encourages slow walks along the waterfront. A fast paced regional cycle path, forming the outer edge of the promenade, connects the project to the broader area. Cultural gardens showcase the regions rich local Aboriginal and European heritage. Stepped concrete hugs the harbour edge. A new beach and beach deck, a rocky headland, an ‘urban pier’, boardwalk, water amphitheatre, swimming areas, fishing points and opportunities for water craft. Shifting waterfront conditions meant the science was the backbone of the design. Sand movements, and the effects of tidal and fluvial fluctuations, informed the location of the waterfront elements such as the water platforms and constructed beach. The concrete platforms, new rock revetment and timber boardwalks minimise the natural movement of sand and maintain beaches. The parklands have become an informal ‘town square’
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ZONE 1: Goorimahbah Precinct
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ZONE 2 : The Central Beach Precinct
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ZONE 3 : Twin Towns Frontage Precinct
Zone 4 : ANZAC Memorial Precinct
Small gatherings/dispays/demonstrations. Passive seating/viewing areas for water based and harbour edge (eg lantern festival). Busking.
Memorial events. Overflow for Southern Beach water events (eg dragon boat). Food, dining and first-aid. Night Markets.
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Zone 5 : Southern Beach Precinct
Zone 6 : The Chris Cunningham Park Precinct
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Cross - Sections
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The Design :
Features
The design responded to sand movements as identified in sediment transport modelling undertaken by Cardno Grogan Richards (project engineers). This involved predicting movements caused by tidal and fluvial fluctuations.This informed the location of the waterfront elements such as the water platforms and constructed beach. Issues relating to flooding across two municipal and state boundaries were analysed and addressed in the overland drainage design. The design had to address cross border flood modelling issues in another state (QLD) that had differing regulations and standards. These had not previously been dealt with, due to the complexity of the site issues and varying regulations. Accordingly, the project is underpinned by an environmental system response (rather than being limited by territorial boundaries). The design strongly promotes physical activity by providing a range of public domain elements such as extensive walkways and cycle-ways. Steps, ramps for those with physical challenges, and unique water front conditions allow access to the water’s edge for swimming and boating. At 4.3 hectares, the parklands cater for a range of other uses enabled by the promenade including meeting places, weekend markets, memorials, children’s play spaces and generous green banks for relaxation. (Arch daily) The brief called for a recreational and tourism centrepiece for the Tweed Heads town centre. This substantial project delivers key priorities of the Tweed Futures Strategy, The Tweed Heads Economic Development Plan, the Tweed Heads Town Centre Master plan, the 7 year plan, The Tweed Shire City of the Arts 2003-2005 Program and the Place Making & Public Art Policy and will bring about significant social, community and economic benefits regionally to the Tweed Shire. Whilst the brief called for an accessible beach, the result was a new beach and beach deck, a new rocky headland, an ‘urban pier’, boardwalk, water amphitheatre, swimming areas, fishing points and opportunities for water craft. The entire waterfront interface has been designed with resilience to cater for changing environmental conditions, frequent tidal variations and intermittent storm surges.
The community open space development has easily accessible parklands featuring; safe and well lit beach decks, walkways and cycle-ways approx. 2500m2 of timber boardwalk varying from 3-10m in width sheltered swimming areas, and open play spaces 238 panel foreshore bank revetment and drainage amalgamation, with in-line filtration works to improve water quality in the harbour. world class water sensitive urban design (WSUD) features, eliminating the need for irrigation All aspects of the built environment has complimented the surrounding natural, cultural and built landscape while protecting and promoting the natural beauty and environment of the area. (multispan.com.au)
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Materials : “The challenge was to complement the existing infrastructure while enhancing the experience for all the locals and visitors to this popular area. We developed a stainless steel linear LED system which was integrated into street furniture and also customised railings, removed traditional lighting points and incorporating lighting into the built environment.� (dux lighting) Lighting from Dux Lighting. Timber beach deck Rocky headland Concrete steps Stone boulder Boardwalk Retaining wall
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Concrete steps, terraces and platforms all for interactive water-based play
A pedestrian-orientated promenade encourages slow walks along the waterfront
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Vegetation and Endemic planting
Sustainability
Many of the trees were left in place to ground the new site in the existing context Large trees included Norfolk Pine, coastal Banksia, and established Yukkas and Dracenas The planting design has been developed in response to the variable salinity levels present on the intertidal shoreline zone, and wind exposure effects. New planting of Australian grasses like Lomandra Dianella have been added for their ability to deal with varying salinity levels. The new revetment wall has been designed to facilitate the growth of mangroves. The design retains many of the successful and significant tree specimens, which help to ground the new project in its context.
It is generally agreed that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Urban sustainability is the idea that a city can be organised without excessive reliance on the surrounding countryside and be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy. The aim of this is to create the smallest possible ecological footprint and to produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible, to efficiently use land, compost used materials, recycle it or convert waste-to-energy, and to make the city’s overall contribution to climate change minimal. Sustainable landscapes are responsive to the environment and can positively contribute to the development of healthy communities. While energy efficiency remains the Holy Grail for green buildings, sustainable landscapes help sequester carbon, clean the air, promote water conservation, prevent resource depletion, and create value through significant economic, social and, environmental benefits. In regards to Jack Evans Boat Harbour the crucial issues in regards to sustainability were facilitating the local ecology, stormwater management, making renewable material choices and addressing tidal surges and sea level rise.
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Sustainability :
Sustainable Principles :
It is generally agreed that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Urban sustainability is the idea that a city can be organised without excessive reliance on the surrounding countryside and be able to power itself with renewable sources of energy. The aim of this is to create the smallest possible ecological footprint and to produce the lowest quantity of pollution possible, to efficiently use land, compost used materials, recycle it or convert waste-to-energy, and to make the city’s overall contribution to climate change minimal. Sustainable landscapes are responsive to the environment and can positively contribute to the development of healthy communities. While energy efficiency remains the Holy Grail for green buildings, sustainable landscapes help sequester carbon, clean the air, promote water conservation, prevent resource depletion, and create value through significant economic, social and, environmental benefits. In regards to Jack Evans Boat Harbour the crucial issues in regards to sustainability were facilitating the local ecology, stormwater management, making renewable material choices and addressing tidal surges and sea level rise.
The design retains many of the successful and significant tree specimens, and these help ground the new project into its context. Use of glass fibre composite structural framing (rather than concrete or timber) to decks. The new revetment wall has been designed to facilitate the growth of mangroves. The design of the overland flow of the storm water is visually integrated into the overall public domain upgrades via rain gardens and swales. The major drainage system beneath the space has been upgraded and GPT etc improved to increase the water quality coming into the harbour. The project accommodates for future sea level rise by establishing a new water front promenade at levels which respond to the IPPC’s estimate of sea level rise. Use of glass fibre composite structural framing to the decks. In a study performed by the University of New South Wales, it was found that composite products are more sustainable than their timber counterparts and, across their whole life-cycle, possess a lower embodied energy.
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Initiatives :
Gross Pollution Traps :
The design responds strongly to withstand 800mm storm surge. To storm surge over time more and more frequency The project has been designed with the ability to be retrofitted in 50 years should that be required. Storm water quality objectives were met via gross pollution traps, and exceeded by inclusion of Water Sensitive Urban Design elements such as rain gardens and bioswales which were not mandatory. Due to the complex hydraulic condition of the harbour landscape it was necessary to resolve the broader site grading and drainage of the parklands in preparation for future detailed landscape design development; and then to focus on the detail of the harbour edge as a primary objective. The detailed storm water infrastructure treatment involves realigning and relocating outfalls, incorporating gross pollutant traps and establishing bio-swales and rain gardens within open space areas where practical. Accordingly the upgrading of the storm water outlets into the harbour is designed to have beneficial impacts on the overall water quality of the harbour. The provision of concrete platforms, new rock revetment and timber boardwalks have been designed to minimise the natural movement of sand and maintain beaches where practical. (http://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/awards/past-awards/landscape-designsustainability-awards-2012-finali)
CDSŽ gross pollutant traps (GPTs) are designed to capture and retain gross pollutants, litter, grit, sediments and associated oils, utilising patented CDSŽ indirect screening technology. (rocla.com.au)
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Stages
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ENVIRONMENT
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ENVIRONMENT The environment is all, it is the total sum of what is around us. All things from rock, soil to temperature and light are connected through microscopic layers that are constantly interacting, evolving and regenerating. The environment is unpredictable, as Landscape designers, how do we design something that is constantly moving and adjusting within these microscopic layers, a force so strong that can randomly throw devastating curve balls. We need to consider our surroundings and decide whether our designs can influence or alter the environment and/or ecosystems it engages with. We have a unique opportunity to influence the conditions of our environment through elements of our designs, water, materials, vegetation. Do we modify, alter, destroy or create.
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CHEONGGYE CHEON
CHEONGGYE CHEON Name: Cheonggye cheon Public recreation space Location: Seoul, South Korea Client: Seoul Development Institute with Seoul Metropolitan Government Landscape architect: SeoAhn Total Landscape Lead Designer: Mikyoung Kim Design Partners: Cheonggyecheon Restoration Centre, Seoul Development Institute, Cheonggyecheon Restoration Citizens Committee, Seoul Metropolitan Government Projected time frame: 27 months Actual time frame: 28 months Project commenced: 1st July 2003
Figure 1. Google Maps. (1997)
Grand Opening: 1 October 2005 Cost: US $371.5 m Size: length: 13.7 km : width 20-85 meters
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Lee Myung Bak When Lee Myung-bak ran for mayor of Seoul in 2001, one of his key campaign promises was to remove the Cheonggye freeway and restore the river in order to revitalize the area economically. Lee had been the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, and one of the project’s goals was to make Seoul into a hub of Northeast Asia by attracting tourism and investment from multinational companies and international organizations.
Figure 2. Removing Freeways - Restoring Cities (Siegel Charles, 2007)
Figure 3. (GlobalSecurity.org, 2007)
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Cheonggye cheon daylighting project Seoul is one of the world’s largest cities and has a population of over 10 million people - 24.5 million in the larger metropolitan area. It is also one of the densest, with over 17,000 people per square kilometre. From modern skyscrapers and neon lights to buddhist temples, palaces and pagodas, seoul is a fascinating mix of old and new. A hub of business. culture and finance both within South Korea and internationally, seoul houses the headquarters for some of the world’s largest corporations. It also has one of the world’s best subway systems the easiest way to get around in this densely populated area.
Figure 4. Google Earth. (1997)
Figure 5. Map (Summit, 2015)
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HISTORY The stream was named Gaecheon (“open stream”) after the first refurbishment project to construct a drainage system during the Joseon Dynasty. The work, which included dredging and bolstering the banks of the stream and building the bridges, was carried out every 2~3 years during this period from the reign of Taejong, the third king of the Joseon Dynasty. King Yeonjo especially undertook the refurbishment work as a national project Gacheon was renamed to Cheonggyecheon, its current name, during the Japanese colonial period. During this time, financial difficulties prevented the colonialists from covering up the stream despite several attempts to do so. After the Korean War (1950–1953), more people migrated into Seoul to make their living and settled down along the stream in shabby makeshift houses. The accompanying trash, sand, and waste, and deteriorating conditions resulted in an eyesore in the city. The stream was covered up with concrete over a 20-year period starting in 1958, and a Figure 6. (Fayhey Nick, 2009) 5.6 km-long, 16 m-wide elevated highway was completed in 1976. The area became an example of successful industrialization and modernization of South Korea. • • • • • • •
Refurbishment project heavy populated prior to pollution population leaving CBD covering river for sanitation creation highway dredging and bolstering the banks
Figure 7. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
Problem: “sanitation” After the Korean War from 1950-1953, the Cheonggye remained seriously neglected, filled with trash and dirt, yet even more people came to Seoul, starting the mass migration to the city for new opportunities. This created all kinds of communities settling near the river. These populations started becoming sick from the localized pollution, and this had a real tarnishing effect on the image of Seoul during the 50’s 1958 - 1967 “covering” In the 1950s, rapid urbanization and concerns over waste and sewage caused city officials to pave over the Cheonggyecheon stream. A 52 foot wide elevated highway was later built overtop the waterway and further distanced the river from the public. 2003 “restore”
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DESIGN The Seoul Metropolitan Government established several organizations to oversee the successful restoration of Cheonggyecheon: the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project Headquarters for the control of the whole project, the Citizen’s Committee for Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project for the management of conflict between the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the union of merchants, and the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Research Corps for the establishment and review of the restoration plan. The Cheonggyecheon restoration project had the purpose of preserving the unique identity of the natural environment and the historic resources in the CBD of Seoul, and to reinforce the surrounding business area with information technology, international affairs and digital industries additionally there was the restoration of two historic bridges, Gwangtonggyo and Supyogyo, was also a contentious issue, as several interest groups voiced opinions on how to restore historical and cultural sites and remains, In the late ‘90s and early 2000’s however, Seoul’s government and public planning sector went through a dramatic paradigm shift, with a desire to focus on green space and environmental health.
Figure 8. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
Design Zones The design of the stream restoration project, which was led by SeoAhn Total Landscape, is split into three distinct zones: Zone A highlights the historical bridges. Zone B is the urban and cultural recreation area that provides artwork, maps and a long walkway with seating. Zone C is dominated by the natural ecologies, industrial mementoes, as well as wetlands designated as ecological conservation areas. Figure 9. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
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Circulation Cheonggye cheon is a river hence the main feature of the site is water. This river is located in the heart of Seoul. Bridges cross the waterway and roads run parallel to the river making the site very accessible. The last zone of the park is indicated in green and represents zone C. Nature.
Figure 10. Diagram (Sharon, 2015)
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CHEONGGYE CHEON
Figure 12. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
Figure 11. (Fayhey Nick, 2009) Figure 13. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
Figure 14. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
Figure 15. (Fayhey Nick, 2009) Figure 16. (Fayhey Nick, 2009)
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CHEONGGYE CHEON
Landscape performance benefits SOCIAL Contributed to 15.1% increase in bus ridership and 3.3% in subway ridership in Seoul between 2003 and the end of 2008. Attracts an average of 64,000 visitors daily. Of those, 1,408 are foreign tourists who contribute up to 2.1 billion won ($1.9 million USD) in visitor spending to the Seoul economy. ECONOMIC Increased the price of land by 30-50% for properties within 50 meters of the restoration project. This is double the rate of property increases in other areas of Seoul. Increased number of businesses by 3.5% in Cheonggyecheon area during 2002-2003, which was double the rate of business growth in downtown Seoul; increased the number of working people in the Cheonggyecheon area by 0.8%, versus a decrease in downtown Seoul of 2.6%.
Figure 17. (O’BranAllan, 2014)
Figure 18. (Cheong Gye Cheon, 2012)
Figure 19. (New Castle University, 2015)
Figure 20 City Clock Magazine. (2015).
Cheonggyecheon Museum 530, Cheonggyecheon-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul Permanent Exhibition Hall / Transition of Cheonggyecheon Stream: - Cheonggyechon prior to coverage in 1950s - Stream cement coverage - Restoration project - Stream views via satellite - The stream during the Joseon Dynasty & throughout modernization - Tour of today’s Cheonggyecheon
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ENVIRONMENT HISTORICAL SEMINAR
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EMERALD NECKLACE
Name: Emerald Necklace
Frederick Law Olmsted
Location: Boston, United States
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was a journalist, publisher, seaman, mine superintendent, dry goods clerk and farmer but he is most recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation’s foremost park maker.
Client: Park commissioned Designer: Frederick Law Olmsted Project duration: 1870 - 1885 Size: (4.5 km2), or 445 hectare From Boston Common to Franklin Park it is approximately 7 miles by foot through the parks.
Olmsted moved his home to suburban Boston in 1883 and established the world’s first fullscale professional office for the practice of landscape design. During the next century, his sons and successors perpetuated Olmsted’s design ideals, philosophy, and influence.
Figure 25
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EMERALD NECKLACE The Emerald Necklace Cambridge
ee ee errrrrr iv iv ive iv iv R R Riv R R ee ee essssssR aarlrlrlrlrlrle hh hh haa C C Ch C C C
Boston Boston Common Common Boston Common Common Boston Common Boston Boston Public Public Garden Garden Public Public Garden Garden Public Public Garden Garden Central Central Burying Burying Burying Ground Ground Ground Central
Commonwealth Commonwealth Ave Ave Mall Mall Commonwealth Ave Mall Ave Mall Commonwealth Ave Mall Commonwealth Commonwealth
Charlesgate Charlesgate Charlesgate Parker Parker Memorial Memorial Parker Memorial Memorial Parker Memorial Parker Parker Victory Garden Garden Victory Garden Victory Garden Victory Garden Victory Joseph Joseph Lee Lee Joseph Lee Lee Joseph Lee Joseph Joseph Playground Playground Playground Playground Playground
Back Back Bay Bay Fens Fens Back Bay Fens Bay Fens Back Bay Fens Back Back
M M M Muuuuuuddd M M dddddddddyyy yyyR R R Riv R R iveeeeeerrr iviv iviv rrr
Emerald Necklace is a 1,100 acre linear park in Boston. The Emerald Necklace parks encompasses half of hte City of Bostons park acreage and is the only remaining linear park designed by Frederick Law Omsted. The Emerald Necklace was nicknamed the muddy river and historically was used as a dumping ground for waste by local homeowners and businesses. Eventually the stream was overloaded and lost its ability to purify itself through biological processes. The redevelopment of the area was instegated to resolve public health issues, the waterways were polluted and Boston was suffering from cholera outbreaks due to improper sewage treatment. Olmsted’s design reshaped the topography to solve the major drainage and sewage problems and created an aesthetic environment which offered relief from the pollution, noise and overcrowding of the city. The linear design included a tidal salt marsh to help balance the ecosystems and give the waterway an opportunity to cleanse itself whilst providing a green corridor for plants and animals. However a later architect made a complete change in ecosystem by the design and installation of dams which stopped the tidal flow and eventuated in fresh water ponds.
Forsyth Forsyth Mall Mall Forsyth Mall Mall Forsyth Mall Forsyth Forsyth
Westland Westland Avenue Avenue Westland Avenue Avenue Westland Avenue Westland Westland Gates Gates Gates Gates Gates Forsyth Forsyth Way Way Forsyth Way Way Forsyth Way Forsyth Forsyth
Forsyth Forsyth Park Park Forsyth Park Park Forsyth Park Forsyth Forsyth
Evans Evans Way Way Park Park Evans Way Park Way Park Evans Way Park Evans Evans
Brookline Riverway Riverway Riverway
Leverett Leverett Pond Pond Leverett Pond Pond Leverett Pond Leverett Leverett Jamaicaway Jamaicaway Jamaicaway Olmsted Olmsted Park Park Olmsted Park Park Olmsted Park Olmsted Olmsted Willow Willow Pond Pond Meadow Meadow Willow Pond Meadow Pond Meadow Willow Pond Meadow Willow Willow
Chestnut Chestnut Street Street Street Chestnut
Wards Wards Pond Pond Wards Pond Pond Wards Pond Wards Wards
Perkins Perkins Street Street Perkins Street Street Perkins Street Perkins Perkins Parkman Parkman Parkman Parkman Parkman Memorial Memorial Memorial
Jamaica Jamaica Pond Pond Jamaica Pond Pond Jamaica Pond Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Jamaica Pond Pond Park Park Jamaica Pond Park Pond Park Jamaica Pond Park Jamaica Jamaica
Arborway Arborway Arborway
White White Stadium Stadium Stadium White
Arborway Arborway Arborway
Arnold Arnold Arboretum Arboretum Arnold Arboretum Arboretum Arnold Arboretum Arnold Arnold
Arborway Arborway Overpass Overpass Arborway Overpass Overpass Arborway Overpass Arborway Arborway
Franklin Franklin Park Park Franklin Park Park Franklin Park Franklin Franklin
Forest Forest Hills Hills Rotary Rotary Forest Hills Rotary Hills Rotary Forest Hills Rotary Forest Forest
Bussey Bussey Brook Brook Bussey Brook Brook Bussey Brook Bussey Bussey
Scarborough Scarborough Pond Pond Scarborough Pond Pond Scarborough Pond Scarborough Scarborough
City of Boston
Walter Walter Street Street Cemetery Cemetery Walter Street Cemetery Street Cemetery Walter Street Cemetery Walter Walter
Emerald Necklace Emerald Necklace Parks Other Open Spaces
0
NORTH NORTH 1/2
1
miles Produced by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department
Figure 27.
Figure 26. 143
EMERALD NECKLACE
CIRCULATION The Emerald Necklace is surrounded by green lined Parkways, roads and walkways connecting all of the parks and providing access to and throughout the entire linear park. Waterways also connect through all of the parks which are released into the Charles River bordering the cities edge.
Figure 28.
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Figure 29.
EMERALD NECKLACE ➤
EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Back Bay Fens
The Riverway
This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
NINE PARKS 1. Boston Common 2. Public Garden 3. Commonwealth Avenue Mall 4. Back Bay Fens 5. The Riverway 6. Olmsted Park 7. Jamaica Pond 8. Arnold Arboretum
© 2012
Figure 30.
Figure 31. EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Riverway This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
➤
Olmsted Park
Back Bay Fens
➤
The Riverway narrow 34-acre park 8 acres of forest landscape paths follow the meandering course of the muddy river more than 100,000 plantings Designed to look natural/ not man-made/ as if it had always been there. Most beautiful bridges in Emerald necklace
➤
Back Bay and the Fens formal and community gardens ball fields memorials and historic structures Olmsted transformed the foul smelling tidal creek into a salt water marsh that was regulated by the tides.
Commonwealth Ave Mall, Public Garden, Boston Common
© 2012
Figure 32.
Olmsted Park - 3 acre Woodlands (2006 restoration project commenced to remove invasive plants and planting began to regenerate the forest canopy. - Wildfield meadow - Designed to draw in wildlife - Olmsted designed two islands in Leverett pond for nesting birds
Figure 33. EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Olmsted Park This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
➤
Jamaica Pond
➤
The Riverway
© 2012
Figure 34 146
Figure 35.
EMERALD NECKLACE
EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Jamaica Pond This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
Jamaica pond - 1.5 mile path around pond - fishing by permit for trout and salmon A pure, glacial kettle hole and was the largest standing body of water in the Emerald Necklace. Olmsted preserved much of the existing vegetation and framed the pond with new trees, shrubs and paths. The pond is stocked with trout and salmon raised in
Parkways - - -
© 2012
Figure 35.
Figure 36. EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Arnold Arboretum This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
➤
Jamaica Pond
Franklin Park
➤ © 2012
Figure 37.
Figure 38. ➤
Franklin Park - 527 acres - 6 miles of roads - 15 miles of pedestrian and bridle paths - zoo (Named for Benjamin Franklin) Franklin Park is the largest park in the Emerald necklace. The park brings together rural scenery, spectacular rock outcroppings, a woodland preserve, areas for active recreation and sports and expansive pastoral vistas.
➤
Arnold Arboretum 281 acres meadows/ forest and ponds 15000 plants – living collection, one of the largest in the world. (www. emeraldnecklace.org - conservancy site) collected from around the globe Est. 1872.
➤
Olmsted Park
Arnold Arboretum
Arnold Arboretum
© 2012
Originally laid out as carriage ways. Preserved as part of the history of the park system Connects the parks from Back Bay Fens in the heart of the city to the more rural Franklin Park. EMERALD NECKLACE PARKS Detail of
Franklin Park This map was conceived and produced by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy with the support of its public and private partners.
Figure 39. 147
Figure 40.
EMERALD NECKLACE
SIMILARITIES
DIFFERENCES
Water Quality: All three projects had an agenda of Improvement of water quality and management As river tributaries all sites were historically used as waste water management at some point. Cheonggye cheon and Emerald Necklace both suffered severe sewage pollution which caused public health problems.
La Rosa Stream has been designed to resemble a natural waterway in terms of meandering and placement of debris. Cheonggye cheon is an artificial stream designed to deal with heavy water. The “stream� is flanked with high concrete walls. Boston's Emerald Necklace is a natural waterway, which has been heavily modified in terms of ecosystems but never covered.
Air Quality: The increase in vegetation and the recreational design of the parks all have a significant improvement of air quality in the surrounding area.
Size and Scale: La Rosa = 2.16 hectares (21,600sqm) Cheonggyecheon = 13.7 km : width 20-85 meters Emerald Necklace = 445 hectare (4.5 km2)
Ecosystem enrichment All sites have gone through an irreversible ecological change in terms of lost species All designs promote the return and increase of animal and plant diversity
Figure 41: LA ROSA NEW ZEALAND
Figure 42: CHEONGGYE CHEON SOUTH KOREA
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Figure 43: EMERALD NECKLACE UNITED STATES
ENVIRONMENT THEORY SEMINAR
THE PLIGHT 149
THE PLIGHT
The Plight Publication from Design with Nature Ian L. McHarg First published 1969.
Ian McHarg Ian L. McHarg was the founder of and is professor emeritus in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Known as the father of ecological planning, his landmark design projects include The Woodlands, Texas, and Amelia Island, Florida. Mc Harg has received numerous honorary degrees and awards, including The National Medal of Art, presented by President Bush in 1990. (Design with Nature) Other publications: Ian McHarg: Conversations with Students / Dwelling in Nature (2007) The Essential Ian McHarg: Writings on Design and Nature (2006) A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (1996) To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg (2007)
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Figure 44: Ian Mcharg
THE PLIGHT 
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THE PLIGHT
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THE PLIGHT
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THE PLIGHT
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THE PLIGHT The Plight Theory Summary Environment Group 4 The environment consists of billions of living organisms which are continually evolving. Our existence here was once in balance with all living things. However over the last decade we have become the world's most deadly parasite. Ian McHarg was aware of this gradual imbalance and through his book “Design with Nature” attempts to educate us on the implications of this growing imbalance and how we can as urban designers resolve it. Ian Mcharg had a gripe with mankind. From an early age he felt a little ripped off, having his idyllic countryside, cut up and developed. His heartfelt devastation from this exasperating carnage put McHarg on a journey, he envisioned a world without the sprawling industrial cities and through his book ‘Design by Nature’ decided to tell everyone how it could be done. Mcharg portrays this vision within the publication“the plight” an excerpt from his book ‘Design by Nature’. Through this siting? McHarg takes us on a tour of his plight, his thoughts and reflections, sandwiched into a colourful, poetic tale. “See the scars of the battle in the remorseless carving, the dismembered neighbourhoods, the despoiled parks. Manufacturers are producing automobiles faster than babies are being born. Think of the depredations yet to be accomplished by myopic highway builders to accommodate these toxic vehicles.” McHarg reflects on how the environment/ nature is slowly losing the war, emphasizing the damage we are inflicting on the landscape, how our methods of development are stripping the Earth of its natural resources, and how we are exploiting these resources to build skyscrapers and expand the borders of our cities. Yet everything comes at a cost, the more we expand and devour the more we disrupt the very existence of our fellow organisms. “Where you find a people who believe that man and nature are indivisible, and that survival and health are contingent upon an understanding of nature and her processes, these societies will be very different from ours, as will be their towns, cities and landscapes. The hydraulic civilizations, the good farmer through time, the vernacular city builders have all displayed this acuity. But it is in the traditional society of Japan that the fall integration of this view is revealed” Earth and its inhabitants are continually evolving, McHarg recognises traditions of old cultures that are mindful of this evolution but who resist the temptation to lose focus on the real worth and value of the land of nature. McHarg urges us to learn from the selfless traditions of these societies and reflect on the effects of our parasitic mining which has happened so quickly that the flora and fauna whose habitats we have
156
altered, depleted, destroyed have not had the luxury of time to adapt to the changing environment. We as a society must overcome these selfish ambitions and work alongside nature, united as one, providing sustenance and strengthening each others weaknesses. McHarg tries to enlighten us of the materialism of man in his quote“ In this countryside, the green belt-or rather the greed belt, where the farmer sells land rather than crops, where the developer takes the public resource of the city’s hinterland and subdivides to create a profit cost? Certainly here is the area where public powers are weakest - either absent or elastic - where the future costs of streets, sidewalks and sewers, schools, police and fire protection are unspoken. Here are the meek mulcted, the refugees thwarted” There will always be fluctuations in the price of land, supply vs. demand. However private sale of land does not provide the public necessities required by communities, the everyday conveniences we might take for granted. The releasement of land for future homeowners is inevitable but McHarg tries to encourage us as future urban planners/ designers to ensure there is a balance between nurturing and consuming. We need to alleviate our parasitic nature by supporting the organisms we live on/ within. We are on the brink of another wave of indulgence, where various amounts of dirt dependant on its vicinity is considered valuable like gold, which seems absurd considering the volatile conditions of our environment. Farmers once again are abandoning their lands rather than respecting and providing the nourishment it deserves. The powerhouse of society blindly subdividing the land trying to gain a monopoly and increase in profit the land has to offer. “The ecological view requires that we look upon the world, listen and learn. The place, creatures and men were, have been, are now and are in the process of becoming. We and they are here now, co-tenants of the phenomenal world, united in its origins and destiny The speed of our evolution and our predicted life expectancy, our materialistic nature to possess could have a worrying result. McHarg requests us as urban designers to educate society on what was and has been and what we could have. He provides a clear example of how we can move forward by looking back, he suggests the answer to living in harmony with other life is all around us we just need to open our eyes. We have become so automated. The roads can only take us so far before we will exhaust the supply and demand.
ENVIRONMENT SITE VISIT
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LA ROSA RESERVE
LA ROSA RESERVE GreenBay Auckland Environmental Planning and Design: Boffa Miskell Team Project: Mark Lewis Worked with: Auckland Council Stormwater and EDC Ltd Engineers HEB construction Client: Auckland Ctiy Council Project Date: 2012 - ongoing Location: GreenBay Auckland Size: 21,600m2 = 2.16 Hectares Cost: 1 million Site Access: La Rosa Street off Godley Road Awards: IPENZ 2014 Arthur Meade Award for the Environment and Sustainability Sculpture Designer: Jacob Neville-Smith The project name, designer, date, location, dimensions, function, programme, circulation pattern, materials, budget, orientation.
Figure 45: Ecomatters (2015) 158
LA ROSA RESERVE
INTRODUCTION La Rosa Reserve is acessed via La Rosa Street off Godley Street or a short walk from Portage Road. The reserve was part of a pastoral farm belonging to the La Rosa family. In the 1960’s the land was subdivided to create La Rosa Street the adjoining residential lots and the reserve. In the 1970’s the reserve was enhanced to make it more manageable in terms of maintenance. The stream was piped and buried the grounds turned into undulating greens. However with the intensitication of properties, buildings and adjacent roads the increase in surface water runoff during periods of rain, water which once would have mitigated its way towards the surrounding streams, is now following overflow paths causing flooding and erosion. The pipes are not big enough to service the water load during peak rain fall and downstream the rivers are widening causing more erosion due to the increase in water. Mark Lewis, principal landscape Architect, believes that “Daylighting” or reinstating watercourses once piped can offer cost effective stormwater management whilst providing an enhanced natural character and landscape amenity values. This project is the first of many planned “Daylighting projects” in a vision to improve the water quality of our waterways, provide public recreational spaces whilst solving stormwater problems and reinstating the natural lifecycle of the streams. This project is of great signifiance in terms of its education on the implications of suburban/ urban intensification regarding the environmental state of our waterways and how we can make changes to improve not only the quality of our waterways and its natural ecological surroundings but our adjacent useable land.
Figure 46: Map (Sharon, 2015)
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LA ROSA RESERVE
LA ROSA RESERVE
Figure 47: Map (Sharon.2015)
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LA ROSA RESERVE
Whau Catchment 29.4 square kilmometers Our site of La Rosa Reserve is intercepted by two streams the Fairburn and Parahiku streams which merge onsite in the far right corner and release into the Avondale stream. They form part of a larger network of streams that make up the Whau catchment. Te Whau, which takes its name from the whau tree, is the Maori name for the tidal creek flowing into the Waitemata Harbour. It is also the name of a headland off Blockhouse Bay, on the shores of the Manukau Harbour. (Mackay,2001) A catchment is an entire area from which a stream or river recieves its water. The Whau catchment covers 29.4 square kilmometers and includes the suburbs: Te Atatu South, Glen Eden, Kelston, Titirangi, Titrangi North, Green Bay, New Lynn, Glen Eden, Avondale, Blockhouse Bay and Mt Albert. The catchment is made of clay, sandstone and mud and was formed about 20 million years ago from land pushed up from the seabed. (Mackay,2001) The Whau river used to be a favourite spot for swimming, fishing and eeling, but pollution from connecting streams and adjacent land has had locals rename it “the dirty old whau. (Mackay,2001) To assist with maintenance some sections of the streams in the catchment were piped underground, however the pipes cannot handle the volume of water when it rains which results in flooding and erosion of the adjacent land and rivers downstream.
Figure 48. Whau Catchment Area
Figure 49.
(The hydrosphere)
Figure 50. Layout Plan (Boffa
Miskell, 2012)
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DAYLIGHTING Daylighting is a term used to describe a process of restoring a stream which has previously been piped underground. Streams were piped underground for various reasons ranging from sanitation, maintenance, use of land. The problem with piping streams underground is that they play a vital role in our living infractructure. In the water cycle streams give the opportunity for water to evaporate and infiltrate. Once piped, the stream no longer has the ability to disperse itself into the earth but rather becomes a strong erosional force in times of heavy rain. Daylighting used as water management: helps to treat stormwater and prevent flooding issues that have consequented from the use of pipes and building intensification. Daylighting promotes ecology: by creating healthy stream habitats and restoring the natural lifecycle of waterways. Figure 51 Map (Sharon, 2015)
Figure 52
Figure 53 Ecomatters (2015)
Figure 54 Ecomatters (2015)
PROCESS OF DAYLIGHTING AT LA ROSA The process of daylighting the La Rosa Reserve Streams involved diggers removing 5,000m3 of clay across a span of 260m of piping with diameters of (1050mm/1350mm). A white strong geotextile synthetic fabric (Geosynthetics are man-made products used to stabilize terrain) was placed over the ground to prevent erosion and sediment from getting into the stream while removing the pipes. Rocks and logs were placed to form the new stream bed and create a healthy habitat for the native fauna. The next step was to remove the geotextile material, topsoil the stream banks and cover it again with a biodegradable geotextile made out of waste wool to prevent the topsoil from washing away, with the bonus of acting as a mulch to suppress weeds while plants are establishing. To complete the project native vegetation was specifically planted to ensure drainage and avoid ponded water for long durations of time was then planted, including toe toe, cyperus, bamuea and cabbage trees (Ezeta, 2014)
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ECOLOGY Watercourses and green corridors provide ecological connections for various fauna and flora. Waterways and the surrounding vegetation, provide a safe corridor for fauna to migrate and flora to disperse seeds. FAUNA The streams of the Whau catchment historically would have provided habitats for native fish, like kokopu, common bullies, eels, inanga, at least 10 species of large invertebrates including freshwater shrimps, damselfly larvae, sandfly larvae, freshwater snails, isopods (slater like swimmers), amphipods, midge larvae, freshwater leeches, aquatic true worms and flatworms. Living around the streams we would have found native forest birds like tui, kereru, pukeko and piwakawaka (fantail), insects like damelflies, mosquitoes and midges. (Mackay,2001) FLORA The native flora surrounding the streams of this catchment would be grasses, sedges, raupo, rushes, flax, cabbage trees, the giant kahikatea and pukatea; and further up the banks - tree ferns, other fern, shrubs like karamu, kohuhu, mapou and more than 83 species of introduced plants. (Mackay,2001) The vegetation along the stream banks helps to stabilise the banks from erosion, filtrate surface runoff from toxins and provide habitats and food source for fauna. Rocks along the stream bed and bank also provide stability, help to mitigate water, reduce erosion and when engaged with moving water, create eddies which adds oxygen to the water. Fallen deadwood such as logs and branches found along the stream and its edges are naturally occurring providing essential habitats and shelter along the stream edge.
Figures 55,56,57: Photos taken by Sharon Eccleshall 2015
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PLANTS
Flax Harakeke Phormium Tenax Large plantings help protect the environment, stablise banks and restore plant biodiversity. In spring, birds particularly tui - flock to feed on the nectar of its tube-like flowers.
Cabbage Tree Cordyline australis Known as the cabbage tree or cabbage palm is a widely branched monocut tree endemic to New Zealand.Its fruit is the favourite source for the NZ pigeon and other
Rushes Juncaceae The tiny light brown seeds are dispersed by water, wind or animals
Figure 59 Figure 60-Cross Section Photos taken by Sharon Eccleshall, cross section image (Boffa Miskell, 2012) 164
Toetoe Cortaderia spp Wet places, stream, lake and forest margins, and disturbed hillsides, from sea level to the subalpine zone are the habitats for Cortaderia richardii(north
Nikau Rhopalostylis sapida Endemic to NZ Striking feature plant. Slow growing, it can take 15 years to form a trunk. Prefers gullies, depressions, at the bottom of steep slopes
LA ROSA RESERVE
Pa harakere
Wharariki. Mountain or coastal flax. Phormium cookianum. While being of lesser importance as a source of fibre, this smaller plant also had a number of special uses, and was important in areas where harakeke was not growing. These flowers usually have a yellow tinge, and the seed pods hang down, and are often twisted.
Pa harakeke is a cultural plant bank, a plantation of special varieties of NZ flax (Phormium spp).
Other plants. Near the centre of the pa harakeke are being planted samples of a number of other native plants with specialist uses for weaving and related cultural purposes. These will include:
The Pa Harakere is open to all visitors for their enjoyment and use. Once the harakeke plants have become established after about three years, weavers are welcome to harvest leaves, provided they follow the tikaka/guidelines which will help ensure the health and sustainability of these plants.
Houi. Narrow-leafed lacebark. Hoheria angustifolia & other spp Karetu. Scented holy grass. Hierochloe redolens Kiekie. Freycinetia banksii
The pa harakeke contains three groups of plants of special cultural significance:
Neinei. Dracophyllum latifolium & other spp
Harakeke. Lowland or swamp flax. Phormium tenax. This plant was of immense importance to Maori in former times. Its strong and flexible leaves and whatau/muka/fibre can readily be used for k!kahu/clothing, whariki/ mats, kete/baskets, taura/ropes, kupeka/nets, and hundreds of other purposes. Many parts of the plant also have rokoa/medicinal uses, and the karari/flower stalks were used for rafts and floats, while the nectar was used to sweeten other foods. Many of these cultural traditions are being maintained and expanded upon today by weavers and other artists, and traditional health practitioners. Leaves of this species can grow up to 3m long, and the flowers on the karari are usually reddish, with the seed pods standing erect. (Mackay, 2001)
Patiti. Taru. Silver tussock. Poa cita & other spp Pakao. Golden sand sedge. Ficinia (Desmoschoenus) spiralis Pirita. Kareao. Supplejack. Ripogonum scandens Rauaruhe. Bracken. Pteridium esculentum Taramea. Papai. Speargrass. Aciphylla colensoi & other spp Ti. Kouka. Maru. Cabbage tree. Cordyline australis Tikumu. Mountain daisy. Celmisia semi-cordata & other spp Toetoe. Kikaho. Cortaderia richardii & other spp (Mackay, 2001) Toi. Mountain cabbage tree. Cordyline indivisa Totara. Podocarpus totara
Figure 55: Photos taken by Sharon Eccleshall, 2015 165
LA ROSA RESERVE
ART WORK Community art work onsite reminds us of the indigenous flora and fauna which used to grace the area and hopefully with the restoration of the wetlands will be back in abundance.
Pukeko king Fisher Tui Long fin Eel Cabbage Tree Koura (Fresh water shrimp) Native flora
Figure 56: photographs by Sharon Eccleshall, 2015
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Tangata whenua
MATERIALS Materials used onsite compliment the natural environment. The use of timber logs for retaining and timber slices for stepping. The concrete pathways allow for a variety of use by skateboarders - scooter riders.
Te Kawerau a Maki are the Tangata Whenua of the former Waitakere City, who hold customary authority or Mana Whenua within the City. Te Kawerau approves of the daylighting of watercourses within the region as it is a benefit for the mauri (environmental health). Iwi wish for waterways throughout New Zealand to be managed to ensure their use as a food source and provide cultural access to flora and fauna for harvest and craft. (La Rosa Stream Daylighting, 2014)
In recognition fo the support of Te Kawerau a Maki who have mana whenua of this area and of their relationship to the stream.
Broadwalk, bridges and platforms are decked using Accoya treated pine. The platforms have antislip treatment.
Figure 57. Photo (Sharon, 2015)
Rocks are used to line the stream bed and banks. This provides stablitiy, helps to mitigate water and creates eddie’s oxygenating the water. Figure 58. Photographs (Sharon, 2015) 167
Bridge railings are powdered coated metal
Logs used in the design mimic a natural environment. Logs have been used as retaining rather than block or wooden panels. Logs and other deadwood is also used along the stream bed to provide habitats.
LA ROSA RESERVE
LONGFIN EEL Sculpture Designer: Jacob Neville-Smith A nine metre long sculpture of the longfin eel is located at La Rosa Gardens Reserve. It will follow the completion of the La Rosa Gardens daylighting project which is restoring the Fairburn and Parahiku streams. Green Bay residents were invited to join the daylighting project at the reserve with schools surveyed to determine what the community would like in the gardens. The Longfin eel was chosen as a symbol of conservation because of growing concern for its population. Commercial fishing and the loss of wetlands pose threats for the longfin eel. Green Bay High year 13 student ‘Jacob NevilleSmith� designed the sculpture in design and visual communication technology, requiring him to complete a design for a client. Jacobs design goals for the eel was to feature bands around its curves which represent stormwater drain pipe joints symbolising the streams past. The sculpture will also have seats that look like fins and segments of broken pipes. The sculpture will be made out of a concrete like material with the creation to be carried out by another artist.
Sculpture Designer: Jacob Neville-Smith The nine-metre longfin eel sculpture was conceptualized by a Green Bay High year 13 student Jacob Neville-Smith. The sculpture is made of a concrete light material .
Figures 59. Photographs (Sharon, 2015)
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Boffa Miskell
Boffa Miskell is a leading New Zealand Environmental planning and design consultancy. They work in various areas of planning, urban planning, landscape architecture, landscape planning ecology, cultural heritage, graphics and mapping.
Mark Lewis (Boffa Miskell) Landscape Achitect, Principal Auckland Mark Lewis joined Boffa Miskell in 2004, as a Landscape Architect. He has been employed in the fields of landscape planning, landscape architecture, and restoration ecology in NZ, the United States, and China for over ten years. His diverse training and experience in multi-disciplinary projects provides him with a working knowledge of specialist fields such as water sensitive design (WSD), bioengineering, catchment management, and ecological restoration. Mark has worked on diverse projects within his specialist area, including multiple roads of national significance, large land development projects, integrated catchment and watercourse management plans, and the design and implementation of stormwater wetlands, bioretention devices, stream rehabilitation, and stream daylighting. On the back of many seminal WSD projects, Mark has worked with Councils to establish guidelines and standards for low impact and water sensitive design. This includes the publication ‘Landscape and Ecology Values within Stormwater Management’ to form part of GD_01 (updated TP10), and GD_04, Auckland’s Water Sensitive Design Manual. Mark Lewis lead the design of La Rosa Reserve, the first of 100 projects planned by the Mayor Len Brown in his vision to make Auckland the “Worlds most liveable City”. With the daylighting of streams the aim is to “improve water quality and create recreational spaces around Aucklands waterways” (La Rosa Stream Daylighting, 2014) Influences in the design come from the major 10.9 km $900 million daylighting project in South Korea “ cheonggyecheon”. Initially attracting much public critisim, after opening in 2005, it has become popular among city residents and tourists. (Cheonggyecheon)
Figure 61 La Rosa Stream: Ecomatters (2015)
Figure 60. Cheonggye Stream 169
LA ROSA RESERVE
SUMMARY La Rosa Gardens Reserve Daylighting restoration project was successful in terms of the benefits to the broader environment and the provision of a functional public space for the local community to engage with the landscape. Whilist we were onsite we engaged with a family who voiced that they seldom crossed the valley as there was nothing to do, but now we visit frequently as our children enjoy exploring the stream. “children enjoy exploring the stream� The design of the site offers mutiple engagements, from looping pathways, forest platforms to bridges with a view. The pathways are mostly accessable and are being used by kids on scooters, mini dirtbikes, dog walkers and couples taking a stroll or canoodling under the trees. The site is welcoming, has clear site lines and provides the community with a sense of safety. The meandering stream design mimics nature and is complimented by the use of natural materials from retaining timber logs to placement of timber and rock steps. The plantings are typical of streamside riparian planting but the design also caters for community use by the additon of the pa harakere. We found that Mark and his team incorporated the local community within the design process by incorporating local schools and artists to provide pieces of art within the site that represent the sites history and indigenous past.
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bibliography Le Rosa Andrew Stuart. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.andrewstewart.co.nz/Case+Studies/La+Rosa+A+Daylighting+project.html. Boffa Miskell. (2012). La Rosa Reserve, Green Bay stream daylighting concept. Concept, Boffa Miskell. britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/148515/cypress . Cheonggyecheon. (n.d.). Retrieved from wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org Ezeta, G. (2014). La Rosa Daylighting Project. Retrieved from EcoMatters Environmental Trust: http://www.ecomatters.org.nz Gandar, D. (n.d.). EcoMatters Environment Trust. Retrieved from http://www.ecomatters.org.nz/blog/bringing-waterways-into-daylight1. La Rosa Stream Daylighting. (2014). Retrieved from Boffa Miskell: http://www.boffamiskell.co.nz Mackay, J. (2001). The Whau our streams, our river, our backyards. (R. Yukich, Ed.) Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland City Council. Maps. (n.d.). Retrieved from The whau river catchment trust: http://www.whauriver.org.nz nwplants. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nwplants.com/business/catalog/jun_eff.html . nznativeplants. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nznativeplants.co.nz/Articles/Rhopalostylis. paharakeke. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.paharakeke.co.nz. The hydrosphere. (n.d.). (Auckland Council) Retrieved from Blue Planet education about our world: http://www.blueplanet.nsw.edu.au wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyline_australis . Cheonggycheon : Jakob Schenker,. ‘City River Restoration At Its Best’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Landscape Performance Series,. ‘Cheonggyecheon Stream Restoration Project’. N.p., 2011. Web. 2 June 2015. Mayer, Natalie. ‘The Cheonggyecheon River Restoration Project, Seoul, South Korea’.Sustainability Writer. N.p., 2012. Web. 2 June 2015. Miller, Steve. ‘Walking The Cheonggyecheon’. The Korea Blog. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Preservenet.com,. ‘Removing Freeways - Restoring Cities’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Emerald necklace Mollyhalligan.com,. ‘Boston’s Emerald Necklace - Molly Halligan’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Tigerprints.clemson.edu,. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Cityofboston.gov,. ‘Emerald Necklace | City Of Boston’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Dlc.dlib.indiana.edu,. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Boston Living With Water,. ‘Emerald Necklace Extended’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Alliance, Future. ‘The Emerald City’. Future Boston Alliance. N.p., 2012. Web. 2 June 2015. Wikipedia,. ‘Ian Mcharg’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015. Amazon.com,. ‘Design With Nature: Ian L. Mcharg: 9780471114604: Amazon.Com: Books’. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 June 2015.
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Figure 23, 24, 29: Retrieved from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons
IMAGES Figure 1 Google Maps. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/ Cheonggyecheon,+Jongno+5(o).6(yuk)ga-dong,+Seoul/@37.5699995,127.006389,15z/
Figure 31,33,35, 36,38,40,43: Retrieved from http://www.emeraldnecklace.org
Figure 2: Siegel Charles, (2007) Removing Freeways - Restoring Cities. Retrieved from http://www. preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysCheonggye.html
Figure 41: Photography by Sharon Eccleshall (20/3/2015)
Figure 3: (2007). GlobalSecurity.org. Retrieved from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rok/ president-lee-myung-bak.htm
Figure 44: Ian McHarg: Retrieved from http://upload.wikimedia.org
Figure 30,32,34, 35,37,39: Retrieved from http://http://www.emeraldnecklace.org
Figure 42: Retrieved from http://static1.squarespace.com
Figure 46, 47, 48: Gis Viewer and Photoshop by Sharon Eccleshall (20/3/2015)
Figure 4: Google Maps. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/ Cheonggyecheon,+Jongno+5(o).6(yuk)ga-dong,+Seoul
Figure 50: Auckland Council (2015) Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz Figure 51, 52: Sharon Eccleshall
Figure 5: Map was made by Summit (30/4/2015)
Figure 45, 53,54, 61: Ecomatters (2015) Retrieved from www. Ecomatters.org.nz Figure 56,57,58,59: Photographys taken by Sharon eccleshall (20/3/2015)
Figure 6,7,8,9: Fayhey Nick, (2009). Retrieved from http://worldcongress2006.iclei.org/uploads/media/K_ LEEInKeun_Seoul_-_River_Project.pdf
Figure 6o
Figure 10: Diagram was made by Sharon (30/4/2015) Figure 11.12.13.14.15.16: Fayhey Nick, (2009) Retrieved from http://worldcongress2006.iclei.org/uploads/media/K_ LEEInKeun_Seoul_-_River_Project.pdf Figure17: O’Bran Allan, (2014) World Congress on Sleep Medicine. Retrieved from http://wasmcongress. com/location/ Figure 18: (2012) Cheong Gye Cheon. Retrieved from http://d-roamingcat.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/cheonggye-cheon.html Figure 19: (2015) New Castle University. Retrieved from http://www.nclurbandesign.org/uncategorised/ cheonggyecheon-river-restoration-project-restoration-environmental-social-economic-seoul/ Figure 20: Swan Justin, (2015) City Clock Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.cityclock.org/removingurban-highways/#.VW_yPfk0WG5 172
What is indigineity to us as landscape arcitects? Indigeneity is the term given to indigenous people. They are the people whom has occupied a landscape for generations and has had a significant influence on the land through their culture and their history. It serves as their way of life, the lessons and the stories of their ancestors. Indigeneity is an important factor that all areas of landscape architecture deals with. Indigeneity is a definition of a dominant indigenous population of the land succumbing to an outside culture, which ultimately changes their way of life. Eventually they are forced in many ways to accept the laws and traditions of a colonised society. Their culture is easily distinguished from the normal community due to their traditional customs, difference in language and strong connection with the land. It is of significant importance when it comes to the design of the landscape, in many ways we are obligated to design their land as their own, as we as the designers succumb to their culture. This leaves us with the question if we as the designers feel obligated or willing to design with the land and its story.
Figure 1. Aotea Square Panorama. (2000).
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INDIGENEITY SITE VISIT
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AOTEA SQUARE
INTRODUCTION
Landscape Designer: Ted Smyth, Rod Barnett, Daniel Irving and Dr Dushko
Bogunovich
Aotea Square is located in Auckland centre and is the important place for Auckland Live venues. Aotea Square whose total area is 4,500 square meters is the largest open-air space in the inner city of Auckland. It often used for festivals, parades, political rallies, cultural shows and community events.
Client: Auckland Council Date of design and construction: opened in 1979 and redeveloped in 2010.
Aotea Sqaure has just been redeveloped by possessing a new look open space and an update to the front of the Aotea Centre. The redesign and upgrade to Aotea Square gives it a different and new contemporary identity.
Location: Auckland CBD (50 Mayoral Drive)
Trees, like predominately native species, are planted in order to increase shade place while not impacting on sightlines during events. Grassed areas and granite paving and steps are combined to new terraces. The designer also provide long benches and clustered square seats. Pole lighting will light the pathway, trees and seats at night while low-glare dome fittings provide subtle lighting in the paved and lawn areas. Around the area, New Zealand art works are prominently positioned. By undergoing the redevelopment, Aotea Square now has the ablity to host much larger range of events.
Size: 4500 m²
Budget: Original value $60 million. Redeveloped value $80 million.
Floor area: 1800 m² Materials: concrete, wood, steel, brick, copper, granite, glass, Aluminium Vegetation: Pohutukawa, Puriri, Karaka, Kauri, Pin oak, Golden totaras,
Putaputaweta, Kohekohe, Taraire and Nikau.
Function: used for festivals, parades, political rallies, cultural shows, community,
meeting place of people Circulation pattern: entry from queen street and memorial dr connects back to welsley street network with heart of the city.
Awards: NZIA Auckland Architecture Award 2011 – Public Architecture
Property Council New Zealand Merit Award – Special Purpose 2011
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Figure 2. Aotea Square plan. (1995). 177
Day and Night usage:
Aotea Square serves as an active space for both day and night uses, and in addition to its use as a leisure and relaxation space large scale events like markets, festivals, concerts and community meetings can be held on the site.Infrastructure for this has been implemented throughout the site with speaker systems, and access to power outlets in place. Permanent fixtures like the seating, trees and light-poles have been situated around the edges of spaces thus allowing for activities to be organised on the open areas. Sight lines have been considered in the placement of permanent furniture and trees to allow large crowds unobstructed views of performances and shows. Lighting has been installed to create an appealing environment after dark; LED light strips illuminate the steps from below and planted trees on the grass areas have ground lights installed beneath them. Light Poles also provide overhead lighting.
Circulation:
There are six points of pedestrian access to the square; ground level access at each of the four corners and two stairway access points to from the underground car park situated along the east and west edges of the square. The north eastern Queen Street access is the main entrance, providing elevated lines of sight down the whole length of the square. Having access points in each corner allows for movment through the site and many pedestrians utilise the square as alternative routes to the joining streets. People can flow through along the edges of the square and diagonally across the paved area where there is a clear path from furniture elements. Way-finding and signage provide clear directions through around the site. The walkway running alongside the town hall also serves as an access for vehicles, and movable bollards have been installed to allow for this. People wishing to relax in the square can utilise the grassed terraces and seating where there is less traffic flow. This separation provides a more enjoyable experience of the space.
The Vents:
As part of the redevelopment of Aotea Square and the upgrade of the underground car park in 2010 the two air ducts on the surface level which function as part of the airflow systems to the car park were built to fit aesthetically with the new architectural design of the square. On the surface the ducts look like elliptical concrete and steel sculptures more so than air-vents. A compromise to the design of the square to address the necessity of the ducts being there.
Figure 6. Transport blog. (Arbury, 2011).
Figure 5. Eye on Auckland. (2012).
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Figure 7. Stainless NZ. (2010).
Figure 8. Auckland: City development. (Klerks, 2002). 179
Figure 9. Auckland: City development. (Klerks, 2002). 180
TED SMYTH Ted Smyth is New Zealand’s most influential and highly respected landscape architect. Born in Auckland in 1937 he trained as a graphic designer and is self-taught in garden design. His work and own personal design style was developed in isolation from other designers. Some of his earlier work in the 1980s reflect the modernist designer Barragan. During the mid-sixties he started developing a passion for garden design, he’s always had an interest in it since a child. Ted did most of his drawings with a mapping pen and a lead pencil to create his unique forms of art within his designs. In the late 90’s he started a landscape design company, Ted Smyth and associates which included Rod Barnett. He focuses on designing with sculptural elements, he’s also very passionate about native restoration and public gardens but is very well known in Auckland for his designs in private gardens. All of his gardens reflect a personal story. In his interview with Contemporary Designers Own gardens, He states that “Stainless steel doesn’t have a lot of flashy personality; unlike brass and copper, its lean and its mean. It can be sculptural, without imposing materialism.” Ted uses a sense of place within his design and has a strong connection to the heritage and native aspects of a site. On his website Ted states “Up to about the mid-nineties, when I became involved in Quay Park and Bastion Point (Whenua Rangatira), I was consciously committed to Contemporary design (of my time and age), but from this time my driver changed to the poetic, without forgetting the contemporary. This coincided with an interest in Maori imagery.” Ted is passionate about using Maori influences within his design to create a sense of place and turn the garden into an art work. By using a mix of native and subtropical plants he merges together the European style garden with a New Zealand edge to it. He primarily only worked with native plants but after the seventies worked with a client who had a cycad and from there he starting involving subtropical plants within his designs. In the early seventies, Ted discovered a passion for stainless steel and neon. He uses this is a poetic way and incorporates his use of native plants. Ted believes that gardening was never seen as an art form and through his painting background he started to make connections between the arts and gardening, making the design process much more creative. “Because of my original interest in art I could see the potential for creativity in garden making that is generally the prerogative of the arts. The notion that garden design could be an art form was not heard and I felt it important to get this idea across; that landscape could be an art form”. Ted clearly has a strong connection between telling the story of a landscape through his design work and this has strongly been incorporated in the design of Aotea Square. By using his abstract way of thinking, Ted created a movement within landscape architecture as becoming an art form. In 2004 Ted received the Gold Award from NZILA for his design of Pie Melon Bay, capturing the beauty of the native planting and telling the story through poetic design. He also received another gold award from NZILA for his work on Waiheke Coastal garden in 2010. Ted is also recognised as an honorary BLA from Unitec and an honorary fellowship from NZILA. Ted now lives on the outskirts of Auckland where he has built and designed his own home and garden, living on a semi-rural property, Ted has found the perfect meeting place between his love for gardening and art. He still continues till this day to work on smaller more residential properties. Rodd Barnett, Dr Dushko Bogunovich and Daniel Irving has influences in the design process alongside Ted Smyth. Rod Barnett was a fellow associate of Ted Smyth’s company. Rod is an internationally known landscape architect and in 2004 he was appointed chair of the Master of Landscape architecture programme at the Sam Fox School of Visual Design In Washington. He is also the author of Emergence in Landscape Architecture and previously taught at Unitec. Rod is known for his extensive thinking into the elements of design and the indigenous aspects of a site. His design of Lumley Plaza in Auckland reflects just this and won a gold award from NZILA. Dr Dushko is an experienced architect in urban design and environmental design. He was an associate of the design process through consideration of the site and the connection points that run through it. Daniel Irving helped with the vegetation and decisions of the planting within the design plan. Daniel is a lecturer for Unitec in the BLA programme. During our interview with him he acknowledged the fact that the use of the plants within the space was native because council wanted it to reflect a sense of place and connect the site to its culture and heritage, although these native plants cannot exist within the landscape of the site due to soil, sun and shade restrictions.
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TE WAIHOROTUI Te Waihorotiu’s (the local stream) flows under Aotea square. Historical references place the streams original flow starting from a catchment bound by Symonds Street, Karangahape Road and Albert Street, with perennial flows emanating from Myers Park, Vincent Street and Wellesley Street east. With Auckland’s region made up of various volcanic cones, approximately 60,000 years ago volcanic activity sent a stream of lava flowing down through the hills, eventually crossing and damming Te Waihorotiu, forming the Aotea swamp (area of the town hall). Archaeological examinations at the first courthouse and gaol by Simon Best produced evidence that Maori culture was present around 700 years ago in this area. A village known as Nga Wharaua tako (tako’s reed huts) was cited on the Hobson street ridge using the surrounding area as a food and water source. During early settlement the stream had been used as a source of fresh drinking water and a source of eels and small trout. With an increase in settlement throughout the area, the natural waterway had succumbed to drain and sewer excretions, with the area showing strong growth and surrounding land needing to be developed a need to contain the banks of Te Waihorotiu’s was proposed. An attempt at enclosing the banks and directing the flow saw an open drain engineered in 1842, with Surveyor General Charles Whybrow Ligar adjusting Felton Mathew’s 1841 plan of Auckland to move lower Queen Street to the west and change Te Waihorotiu to a run along its eastern side. The ligar canal extended from the mouth of the stream to the tidal estuary at the time on Wyndam Street directing the flow of water to the estuary. A solid day’s rain in 1843 would see flooding throughout lower Queen Street, leading to collapses along the canals edges. Ligar canal by 1859 was the largest of 13 drains located throughout the area, reaching six to ten feet across and three feet deep, by 1869 the pressures of settlement north of Victoria street was causing much public concern from the smell and visual filth extruding out to the harbour. A period of replaced in 1873 saw the ligar canal beginning to be fully-enlcosed with a brick barrel style drain, with the drain eventually being phased out with modern drains and being used as seepage for sewers.
Figure 11. 2008 image. (2009).
Figure 13. Current image. (2009).
Figure 10. 1999 image. (2009). 182
ART WORKS OF AOTEA SQUARE
AOTEA SQUARE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH AOTEA CENTRE
Robbie: This sculpture designed by Toby Twiss is a memorial to the former Auckland Mayor Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson. The sculpture was designed to celebrate his contribution to the city and was commissioned in 2002 on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Aotea Square not only is a large civic space in the heart of the city, it also needs to be able to hold big crowds of people during cultural festivals, celebrations, markets and other large social events. Aotea Centre holds two theatre rooms, function rooms and the administration offices for Auckland Live. The design of Aotea square itself took a process of 10 years and the original design was meant to reflect lava flow through the square and connecting it back up to Meyers Park. The design idea was to reflect the Waihorotiu Stream and this design by Ted Smyth and associates was the design which won the completion for the redesign for Aotea Square, However, the politics within council altered this design. Local Iwi groups were very much involved in the process to create a meeting ground to bring people together as the square is in the middle of the city and has historic buildings such as the town hall surrounding it.
Waharoa: Designed and carved by Selwyn Muru, is the entrance into Aotea Square. For the artist, the design was all about tradition and bringing all the different culture into one meeting place. The Maori elements such as The Sun God is paired along 19th century art and Polesyian drawings. Red Dancer: Designed by Barry Lett, and part of one of the artworks commissioned for the Square. This can be found on the outside of Aotea centre, representing the heroine and heroic qualities of comedy, a play on the areas rich history in theatre. Untilted Metal and wood sculpture: Designed by Paratene Matchitt , the design is part of a group of artworks commissioned for the Aotea Square and centre. The sculpture which can be found on the side of the Aotea Centre is used to describe the relationship between the Maori people and the cultures which now live alongside them. It gives a sense of hospitality and acceptance.
Figure 13. Location map. (2009).
Figure 14. Aotea Centre. (2009). 183
This Haiku poem, written by Hone Tuwhare in 1970. Hone is known of being the first Maori poet published in english. The haiku was placed on the Waharoa arch because Muru, belived it’s an important part of New Zealand culture. Not only is Aotea Squre the heart of the city, but so is the artist’s birthplace, the Northland.
The Waharoa is piece of art that celebrates Maori culture in the heart of the city, creating a welcoming sense of arrival and a strong sense of place, carved by Selwyn Muru of Ngapuhi and Te Aupouri. It is noted that the Waharoa has both Maori and Pakeha elements. The mayor of Auckland, John Banks, notes that the Waharoa is a tribute to the people of Ngāti Whatua. Muru successfully integrates aspects that relate to New Zealand, Maori Mythology, contemporary politics and the functions of Auckland, welcoming visitors to the square. His work, which has mana, pride that symbolises what has been called the Maori art renaissance and there fore coveys a key aspect of New Zealand’s identity. The Waharoa is a seven metre high and ten metre wide gateway, that stands at the entrance to Aotea Square and transforms it into a marae or meeting place, and Aotea Centre into a meeting house. The Waharoa is a carved timber gateway, installed in Aotea Square in1990. Between the original installation, the work has been twice dismantled by the Auckland Council’s public art team, because it wasn’t stable. They ended up re-installing it in time for the Rugby world cup in 2011. Selwyn Muru: “The aim of this waharoa (gateway) is to welcome and ebrace manuhiri to Aotea Square. I chose timber as a medium because it already has Mauri (life force) of its own that would exude warmth in an environment dominated by steel, glass and stone.”
Figure 15. Waharoa arch. (Maclean,2000).
At the top of the gateway are the five main symbols that arise. Looking from Queen Street from the right, is Tama nui te Ra (God of the Sun). Next to him is Tangaroa, God of the Sea, seen in whale form, mounted by a myth-man. In the middle is Tane Mahuta (God of the Forest), who is depicted as a bird, and beside him is Tawhiri Matea (God of the Elements). On the far left, representing heavenly spheres, is Whetu me te Marama (the crescent moon and stars). For the artist, tradition is not the only major element. The sculpture includes images from all over the Pacific and, while the shapes within it are rooted in mythology, its themes are contemporary. The arch itself consists of a multitude of busy images. There are birds, fish, the nuclear disarmament symbol, a cross, and a heart and arrow. Abstract images derive from Polynesian tapa cloth, and the triangular patterns form 19th century Maori art. The dog is inspired by one which belongs to Muru’s friend and fellow-artist Paratene Matchitt.
Figure 16. Text on theWaharoa arch.(Maclean, 2000). 184
MAORI CULTURE IN AOTEA SQUARE
TREASURE OUR MAORI IDENTITY:
1.This work provides a ceremonial entrance way into the space which can be used for special occasions. However, its placement does present some challenges for events because a 4m separation buffer needs to be maintained at all times. 2.This beautiful artwork called ‘Waharoa’ (ceremonial gateway) was successfully refurbished and integrated into the square. This piece celebrates Maori culture in the heart of the city, creating a welcoming sense of arrival and a strong sense of place. 3.Refurbishment was required as the macrocarpa timber which formed the structure had deteriorated significantly over 10 years. It was replaced with a durable hardwood timber and a reinforced steel skeleton was installed to prevent leaning. This highlights the importance of using durable materials for everything installed in civic environments.
Figure 17. Waharoa Gate. (2003).
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Aotea Square was given strict guidelines to only use native species for planting, as it is considered as a significant “meeting point” in Auckland, not only because of its current central location, but also with its ancestral history. There was constant contemplation and indecision about what kind of plants were to be installed. The council, the public, the iwi, local plant nurseries and designers were all consulted, and had various opinions on what would best suit the site. At one point, the design had to be redone in order to incorporate pansies into the flowerbeds as the locals felt that it was an important part of the annual planting in the square. The plants that were finalised include Pohutukawa, Puriri, Karaka, Kauri, Pin oak, Golden totaras Putaputaweta, Kohekohe, Taraire and Nikau Palms. These had no significance to the existing vegetation of the site, only to New Zealand culture. The usage of native trees also provides a habitat for inner-city birds, connecting it to the natural environment of the city. Both long-term and specimen trees were used for the square as they would have the best chance at surviving in this site with its many limitations. Botanical name: Common name: Agathis australis
Vitex lucens
Metrosideros excelsa
Rhopalostylis sapida
Kauri
Identification:
Figure 1.
-Large coniferous tree reaching heights of 50m -Excellent specimen tree - Leathery, smooth, bronze-green lance shaped for low maintenance parks leaves 8 – 12cm long & large gardens - Bears cones after roughly 25 years of growth
-Large spreading tree naturally growing to 20m, in cultivation up to 10m. - Compound, shiny, leathery 8 – 12cm leaves, Puriri bright green, depending on light levels, darker colour with less light. - Small 2-3cm tubular pinkish-red flowers. - Round 2cm, pink-red drupes, ripening to black. -Upright variety of pohutukawa reaching 8m – 10m - Young juvenile leaves are soft, light green with Pohutukawa bronze tinted stems. Adult leaves are thick, leathery, dark green, with white tomentum beneath. Elliptic shaped, 2-5 – 10cm long. - Dense clusters of dark crimson 3 – 4cm stamens, open from powdery buds in summer
Nikau
Landscape purposes:
-Slow growing palm up to 10m tall - Dark green pinnate shaped leaves up to 3m long, with sword shaped leaflets 90cm - Nikau’s flower after 30 years, producing spikey 30cm inflorescences of tiny pinkish flowers. - Bright red ovoid drupes hang down from spikes at 1.2cm
- Specimen tree - Re-vegetation/shelter belts - Attracts native birds
Figure 2.
- Specimen tree - Coastal planting - Shelter - Attracts native birds - Street planting
Figure 3.
- Specimen tree or group planting - Used for borders of large gardens or driveways - Attracts native birds
Figure 4.
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Carpodetus serratus
Corynocarpus laevigatus
Dysoxylum spectabile
Podocarpus totara Aurea
Beilschmiedia tarairi
Quercus palustris
- Small tree with upright spreading branches - Planted along stream growing up to 10 meters banks and forest margins Putaputaweta -Coarsely toothed, leathery, elongated alternate- - Re-vegetation/shelter ly arranged leaves belts -White flowers - Attracts native birds -Purple fruit ripening to black
Karaka
Kohekohe
Golden totara
Taraire
Pin oak
Figure 5.
- Fast growing, rounded tree up to 15m - Large, leathery elliptic-oblong dark green leaves with recurved margins, 7 – 20cm long. -Small greenish flowers in panicles up to 20cm - Large 4cm, smooth oval drupes, ripening orange.
- Specimen tree - Re-vegetation/shelter belts - Attracts native birds
Figure 6.
-Fast growing, rounded tree growing up to 15m -Leathery, ovate to obovate oblong leaves compound, pinnate, alternate on petioles up to 40mm long, leaflet pairs 4-6 opposite, bright green. - Long drooping panicles of greenish-white, waxy flowers which sprout from the trunk. - Green fruit capsules are obovoid in shape 2-3mm long.
- Excellent specimen trees - Re-vegetation/shelter belts - Maori used for medicinal purposes - Attracts native birds
Figure 7.
- Large coniferous hybrid tree reaching 10m. - Hard, sharply pointed, linear 2 x 2cm leaves. Yellow-golden foliage - Males produce cones; females bear small red berry-like oval fruit, 2mm long.
Figure 8. - Specimen tree in large gardens or parks -Re-vegetation/shelter belts -Tall hedges - Attracts native birds
- Forms a wide spreading tree 10 – 20m -Glossy 15cm long, broadly ovate to elliptic shaped leaves. - Small green-brown flowers with petals in panicles - Large oval, shiny purple drupes up to 3.5cm
- Planted as a specimen tree - Re-vegetation/shelter belts - Attracts native birds
-Medium sized deciduous tree growing 18-22m. - Large specimen tree for - Leaves are broad, with five or seven lobes. street, large gardens, park Each lobe has 5-7 bristle-tipped teeth, 5 – 16cm and farm planting. long. Bronze colouring in autumn - Autumn contrast - Acorns are borne in a shallow, thin cap, 10– 16mm long, green maturing pale brown.
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Figure 9.
Figure 10.
CONCLUSION In conclusion the design of Aotea Square has a strong relationship between the people of Auckland and the wider community. It incorporates Maori culture and creates a meeting place for the community surrounding the area,. The design of the square was influenced by the sues and the activates among the people. The square holds big festivals and events, the majority being cultural. The use of native vegetation reflects a sense of place and creates a look into the culture of Maori people and what is sacred to them. Overall the design was successful in bringing together the people of Auckland as well as extending it into the wider community and reflecting a sense of place and history. However we do feel that there isn’t a strong sense of indigenous design at first glance. Its when you start to look behind the design aspects and symbolism behind this.Aotea is not suucseful in showing the signs of an indegiouns design. This is due to the fact that the original design was altred multipule times by council to suit theit needs and the story of the design was lost. However, Aotea does show endemic plants, incorprates a Maori sculpture and aims is to bring people together.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
New Zealand sculpture: A history. (2009). Retrieved from https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=ANcefr26DakC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=where+is+the+text+from+the+waharoa+come+from+in+aotea+square&source=bl&ots=HPw17-mzUK&sig=IKwIkkSxruFjgdUAmnT7hwz4yzk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aY8eVa7yBaXRmwXAp4E4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=where%20is%20the%20text%20from%20the%20waharoa%20come%20from%20in%20 aotea%20square&f=false
TEXT
Aotea Square. (2009). Retrieved from http://events.stuff.co.nz/auckland/venue/aotea-square Aotea Square redevelopment. (1995). Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20081014224615/http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/projects/aoteasquare/default.asp
Otten, L. (2004). Barnett Appointed Chair Of Sam Fox School’s Landscape Architecture Programme. Retrieved from http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27049.aspx
Aotea Square sculpture delayed. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/5345652/Aotea-Square-sculpture-delayed
Stainless NZ. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.nzssda.org.nz/Story?Action=View&Story_id=1383
Auckland Council. (2009). Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20081016094746/http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/projects/aoteasquare/pdfs/landscapeplan.pdf
Senne, C. Aotea Square. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.articlesweb.org/culture/aotea-square-the-ultimate-destination-for-christmas-shopping Smith, T. (n.d.). Conditions and Culture. Retrieved from http://www.tedsmyth.co.nz/
Auckland council. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/newseventsculture/OurAuckland/mediareleases/Pages/InternationalFlagsFlyAtAucklandTownHall.aspx#.VRyxjHhMoTM.facebook
Smith, T. (n.d.). Education And Work Practice. Retrieved from http://www.tedsmyth.co.nz/profile
Barker, B. (2013). Contemparary Designers’ Own Gardens. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club Ltd. Clague, V. (2013). New Zealand Institute of landscape Architects. Retrieved from http://www.nzila. co.nz/about-nzila/previous-nzila-awards.aspx
Smith, T. (n.d.). Influences. Retrieved from http://www.tedsmyth.co.nz/profile Smith, T. (n.d.). Projects and Points. Retrieved from http://www.tedsmyth.co.nz/
Elliott, G. (2009). Dr Dushko Bogunovich. Retrieved from http://www.unitec.ac.nz/about-us/contact-us/staff-directory/dr-dushko-bogunovich
Stream Daylighting. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/technicalpublications/TR2008-027%20 Stream%20Daylighting%20Identifying%20Opportunities%20part%202.pdf
Eye on Auckland. (2012). Retrieved from http://eyeonauckland.blogspot.co.nz Janis Crow. (2013). Manukau Institute of Technology. Auckland. New Zealand
Thompson, W. (2009). Sculpture’s $158,000 repair job. Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10741055
Mackay, J. (2009). Whakairo – Māori carving. Retrieved from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/video/43119/waharoa-at-aotea-square
Timespanner. (2012). Retrieved from http://timespanner.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/update-on-te-waharoa-o-aotea-gateway.html
Maclean, C. (2009). Aotea Square. Retrieved from http://www.aucklandlive.co.nz/aoteasquare.aspx
Turner, M. (2009). Aotea Square. Retrieved from http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/venue/aotea-square
Making Aotea Square a great space for events. (1995). Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/ web/20080803052745/http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/news/council/200807/13/a01.asp
Watts, P. (2005). Aotea Square. Retrieved from http://www.panoramicearth.com/2244/Auckland/Aotea_Square
Mander, G. (2014). Aotea Square. Retrieved from http://www.aucklanddesignmanual.co.nz/project-type/parks/hub/civic-space/case-studies/aoteasquare# 188
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
VEGETATION IMAGES
IMAGE
Figure 1. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/table-1/kauri.html
Figure 1. Aotea Square Panorama. (2000). Retrieved from http://midnight-cardinal.deviantart.com/art/Aotea-Square-Panorama-181644666
Figure 2. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/trees-native-botanical-names-r-to-z/puriri.html
Figure 2. Aotea Square plan. (1995). Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20081016094746/http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/projects/aoteasquare/pdfs/landscapeplan.pdf
Figure 3. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/trees-native-botanical-names-m-to-q/pohutukawa.html
Figure 3. Architectus, Aotea square redevelopment architectural elements. (2010). Retrieved from http://www. architectus.com.au/en/projects/aotea-square-redevelopment-architectural-elements#
Figure 4. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/trees-native-botanical-names-r-to-z/nikaupalm.html
Figure 4. In Aotea Square. (2004). Retrieved from http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=972a852a-12cc-459a-9b9549c688338802
Figure 5. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/table-1/marble-leaf-putuputuweta.html
Figure 5. Eye on Auckland. (2012). Retrieved from http://eyeonauckland.blogspot.co.nz
Figure 6. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/table-1/karaka.html
Figure 6. Arbury, J. (2011). Transport blog. Retrieved from http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/04/02/aotea-station/
Figure 7. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/table-1/kohekohe.html
Figure 7. Stainless NZ. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.nzssda.org.nz/Story?Action=View&Story_id=1383
Figure 8. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/trees-native-botanical-names-m-to-q/podocarpus-totara-aurea-golden-totara.html
Figure 8. Klerks, J. (2002). Auckland: City development. Retrieved from http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=372853&page=2 Figure 9. Klerks, J. (2002). Auckland: City development. Retrieved from http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=372853&page=2
Figure 9. Way, L. (2014). Terrain. Retrieved from http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/table-1/beilschmiedia-tarairi-nz-taraire.html
Figure 10. 1999 image. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/technicalpublications/TR2008-027%20 Stream%20Daylighting%20Identifying%20Opportunities%20part%202.pdf
Figure 10. Mayer, D. (2003). Wikimedia commons. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quercus_palustris_1_%28nautical2k%29.jpg
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Figure 11. Current image. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/technicalpublications/TR2008-027%20 Stream%20Daylighting%20Identifying%20Opportunities%20part%202.pdf Figure 12. 2008 image. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/technicalpublications/TR2008-027%20 Stream%20Daylighting%20Identifying%20Opportunities%20part%202.pdf Figure 13. Maclean, C. (2009). Location map. Retrieved from http://www.aucklandlive.co.nz/boxlocation.aspx Figure 14. Maclean, C. (2009). Aotea Centre. Retrieved from http://www.aucklandlive.co.nz/Random-Acts/RandomActsMaster/Venues/Aotea-Centre.aspx Figure 15. Horiwood’s Blog. (2000). Retrieved from https://horiwood.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dsc06771.jpg Figure 16. Aotea Square sculpture delayed. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/5345652/Aotea-Square-sculpture-delayed Figure 17. Flickr, Waharoa Gate. (2003). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/russellstreet/8093191579/
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INDIGENEITY OVER SEAS SITE
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LARTELARE ABORIGINAL HERITAGE PARK Our definition of indigeneity
Indigeneity is the term given to indigenous people. They are the people who’s occupied a landscape for generations and has had a significant influence in their culture and their history. It serves as their way of life, the lessons and the stories of their ancestors. Indigeneity is a factor when it comes to landscape architecture all around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Evidence of the local people and the stories ofindigenous people can be found as far back as ancient Chinese gardens. Indigeneity is a definition of a dominant indigenous population of the land succumbing to an outside culture or ethnicity via settlement or conquest, eventually becoming part of the colonised population and living within the settlements standards, rules or laws. Their culture is easily distinguished from the normal community due to their traditional customs, difference in language and strong connection with the land.
Official definitions of indigeneity The UN / WGIP:
The original definition was accepted in 1972 by the UN Working Group for Indigenous Peoples, but was considered too restrictive and was later amended to what follows in 1983. Indigenous populations are composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them, by conquest, settlement or other means, reduced them to a non-dominant or colonial condition; who today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than with the institutions of the country of which they now form part, under a state structure which incorporates mainly national, social and cultural characteristics of other segments of the population which are predominant. (a) they are the descendants of groups, which were in the territory at the time when other groups of different cultures or ethnic origin arrived there; (b) precisely because of their isolation from other segments of the country’s population they have almost preserved intact the customs and traditions of their ancestors which are similar to those characterised as indigenous; (c) they are, even if only formally, placed under a state structure which incorporates national, social and cultural characteristics alien to their own. In 1986, the following rather important line was addedany individual who identified himself or herself as indigenous and was accepted by the group or the community as one of its members was to be regarded as an indigenous person.
OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS OF INDIGENEITYILO 169 & WORLD BANK: ILO 169
The ILO 169 Convention applies to the following peoples; both tribal peoples whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations, and to peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabit the country at the time of conquest or colonisation.
WORLD BANK
In 1991, the World Bank adopted the following definition of indigeneity. Indigenous Peoples can be identified in particular geographical areas by the presence in varying degrees of the following characteristics: a) close attachment to ancestral territories and to the natural resources in these areas; b) self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct cultural group; c) an indigenous language, often different from the national language; d) presence of customary social and political institutions; e) primarily subsistence-oriented production.
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LARTELARE ABORIGINAL HERITAGE PARK Designer: Taylor Cullity Lethlean
INTRODUCTION
Client: Land Management Corporation Aboriginal Heritage Park is a large public open space which contained within the $2billion Newport Quays stage development. This park is very important within the development because of its great contribution in reflecting the indigenous elements of the site and that just fit our topic Idigeneity. Indigeneity is a form of indigenous design in landscape architecture. Lartelare Aboriginal Heritage Park is a typical indigenous site. It is a park named after a Kaurna person who was the last Kaurna elder that lived in traditional manner in port Adelaide. The Kaurna people are a group of Indigenous Australians and the Adelaide Plains of South Australia is their traditional living lands. Unfortunately, Kaurna culture and language was nearly destroyed in decades after the European colonization in South Australia in 1836. However, some early missionaries and researchers used extensive documentation that enable the Kaurna culture and language revive. Nowadays, Lartelare Aboriginal Heritage Park does the same thing in rescuing and revealing the traditional Kaurna culture. Lartelare, the indigeneous woman, born on the banks of the Port River which is her local habitat led a natural and leisurly life and that later was threatened by European’s arrival. Lartelare then worked for the European and was evicted from the land. Her great-great granddaughter , Aunty Veronica Brodie, shared Lartelare’s story with the Port Adelaide community and wanted they return the land to its indigenous owners.
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Location: Port Adelaide, South Australia Completion Date: 2009 Construction Budget: $1,200,000 Size: 6300m2 Circulation Pattern: entry from Wira Dr and is just besides Old Port Reach Awards: 2012-AILA National Landscape Architecture Award 2009-AILA (SA) Award for Design
Figure 2. Google Earth. (1997). 194
Figure 3. Google Earth. (1997). 195
Tayor Cullity Lethlean is one of the most reknowned Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning firms in Australia. Since their establishment inn 1990, they have woeked on and developed a great variety of private and public sites in Australia and internationally. The company started off with Kevin Taylor and Kate Cullity in Adelaide. In 1990, they were given the opportunity to work on the Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre the most iconic indigenous site in Australia. Their next big opportunity was the designing of The Australian Garden in Melbourne. These two were significant Australian Landscapes, in which they kept in mind the history, culture, natural environment, people, and growth of Australia through their artistic expression. With the addition of Perry Lethlean in 1997, they then had a stronger design team. With Kevin specialising in Architecture, Kate in Botany and Visual Art, and Perry with a background of Urban Design and Town Planning, the three of them worked on the Geelong project together, which too was a success. At present, the directors of the company are Kate Cullity, Perry Lethlean, Scott Adams and Damien Shultz. They have two studios, one in Adelaide, and the other in Melbourne, and design in collaboration with their team of twenty-four. They are known as the most awarded Landscape Architecture Firm in Australia. Some of the major awards they have acquired are for:
The entry into Lartelare Can be found at point A, next to the apartment blocks, this then leads you to the exit point that flows into the waterfrontport. The park not only act as a public park, it is a walk through into the sites rich history. It flows from residential, to historical to commercial. The park is also used as a cultural meeting place for the local Kaurna, it’s a place where they teach the younger Kaurna people about the cultural and the language. There are two main entrances into the park from Wirra Drive and Heart Street.
- Box Hill Community Arts Centre - Flinders Rangers Regional Park - Forest Gallery - North Terrace - Craigeburn Bypass - The National Arboretum, Canberra (In Progress) TCL has a definitive idea on how a landscape should be designed and the creative process in which it is. One can see these essential elements come through in their design. These are focused on: - Contemporary Urban Life and Global Culture - Elemental power of site and landscape o By using the qualitites of the existing landscape, and enhancing them - Artistic practice in a range of disciplines o With collaboration with clients, communities, academics, and collegues. - Creation of a sustainable future - Creating a Narriative
Figure 4. Diagram (Glenn, 2015). 196
Lartelare heritage parks vegetation design had been influenced around how the Kaurna culture interacted and lived their daily lives with the different indigenous plants that surrounded them throughout their cultural history. The patterns present across the parks planting plan, surrounding the contemplative nodes, show aboriginal weaving techniques used for making baskets, mats and other traditional items, giving a deeper connection to their culture. Of the many planting done throughout the park, various plants are used for collection by the local tribes including spiny-head mat-rush (Lomandra longifolia), pale rush (Juncus pallidus) and knobby club rush (Ficinia nodosa). These extra layers in the design allow an ability to pass down their knowledge for future generations and to provide the local community with a higher understanding of cultural awareness. Other planting that have cultural uses but aren’t used for collection for example are red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) for which the leaves were used for medicinal purposes and the bark for making canoes, bowls and dishes, blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) and drooping sheoaks (Allocasuarina verticillata) for which the hardwood was used for making strong spears, boomerangs, clubs and shields, with the bark soaked in water for joint pains or gargled for toothaches. A Planting program has been organised for locally unemployed aboriginals to promote training and qualifications through the department of further education, employment science and technology and funded by local council, the developers Newport Quays Consortium and state government, providing them with benefical skills towards future employment but also a chance to learn about Kaurna culture and the significance of Lartelare Park. Adjacent to Jervois Bridge, sixteen aboriginal locals planted 11,000 indigenous seedlings. The plantings undertaken on site and the surrounding landscape reflect the strong connection between vegetation and the local culture, providing a link to indigeneity throughout the park.
Australia has been home to the Aboriginals for more than a 1000 years. The Aboriginals of Australia are scattered over many different states and they all have different traditions, beliefs, weapons and different art forms much like the Maori people of New Zealand. The Kaurna people extended from Crystal Brook to Cape Jervis and travelled in two groups. It wasn’t until after WW2 that they started migrating further. After the European and Indonesian settlement in the 1700’s and late 1780’, the Aboriginal culture not only adapted, but had to fight for their land and their beliefs as colonisation started to take over. And by the late 1840s the Kaurna people were forced to leave the Kaurna plains.
Figure 5. Flickr. (2009).
Figure 7.Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park. (1997).
Lartelare is a park situated in Port Adelaide’s Waterfront, the park aims to reclaim the lost history of Port Adelaide. The parks design features the stories of the area as told through four generations from Lartelare to Aunt Veronica Brodie. She was the last relative of Lartelare to pass away in 2007. She was one of Adelaide’s strongest defenders for the rights of the indigenous people of Port Adelaide. She was part of the Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri peoples. Lartelare was named after Veronica’s grandmother who was born on the banks of the Port River. In 1889 Lartelare was evicted from her birth site as a sugar refinery (Colonial Sugar Refinery Company) was to be built on the site sand they provided jobs for the Kaurna people but had to be evicted in 1890 when the Colonial company took over. The company was destroyed in 1901 by a fire. Aunt Veronica aimed to reclaim the history and ultimately succeeded through making the entire area a place for the Kaurna people to come together again and reclaim their lost history.
Figure 6. Flickr. (2009).
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In North Western Adelaide, land can only be claimed by the Aboriginal people if ownership and the historical context can be proven. This is why Aunt Veronica was an advocate for her people and their rights. Laura Lartelare was forced to leave the area as her and her family set up camp here. But when the government sold the land, a sugar refinery was built, and what told the story of Lartelare home, was lost. The Lartelare Heritage Park aims to tell the story of the area and the history and beliefs of the ancestors. In 2009, Lartelare was opened to the public and celebrates nature, art, history and culture, it aims to connect the people of Adelaide to the Kaurna people. Taylor Cullity Letham consulted the local Kaurna people to tell the story of their ancestors and reflect a sense of place. The Kaurna people are the owners of the Adelaide Plains and the port. Alongside the park sits the Port Adelaide Waterfront.
The Kaura people are the Aboriginal tribe in the Port Adelaide area. The land of that area tells the story of the ancestors and their settlement, their battle with the western world evicting them from their land and the story of Lartelare. Now, Port Adelaide and the new waterfront development takes this history into consideration and aims to give back this lost history to the Kaurna people. Veronica Brodie was a founder of the advocate group Lartelare Glanville Land Action group. In her years of fighting for the Kaurna people’s rights, she both failed but also succeeded in making the Port in west Adelaide a community hub for her people, a place for them to celebrate their culture and welcome the wider community. The Kaurna people believe in artwork to tell their stories of nature, war and love. For the Kaurna people it is about family and taking care of the land that influences their beliefs. According to a census in 2006, the Aboriginal people of Adelaide only makes up 1.2 % of the population in Adelaide. The Kaurna population in Western Adelaide reaches to about 300 people. When the government proposed a small section of the land for a park to be built to the story of the Kaurna people Veronica and her land action group as well as the Kaurna heritage group did not approve.
The Kaurna people were different from the neighbouring tribes due to certain language and appearance aspects, however they intermarried with Ngarrindjeri people. Starting in the 1960’s the Aboriginal people in Adelaide started claim access to social, education norms from the Western society.
They felt it was a compromise on their behalf. They needed a place where the people can learn the arts and crafts and the language of their ancestors. However, in 2006, the group appealed again for the government to present a different plan, but the government didn’t make any changes and the group didn’t pressure it any further as Brodie’s health condition became worse. In 2009 the park was built, two years after the death of Veronica Brodie. Before the park was opened her daughters and extended family planted native Kaurna plants. The art work of the Kaurna people is an imported observation in the park as the walkway reflects this and the patterns in which the plants are planted gives a sense of the Kaurna people as well. Local Kaurna also crafted specific elements to be places in the park. The park also created new jobs opportunities for the people as the maintenance and planting of the native vegetation was done by the local Kaurna people, including Brodie’s family. The interpretation of the stories told by the design of the board walk was carefully chosen by the Kaurna people and assisted the landscape architecture e group Taylor Cullity Latham.
Figure 8. Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park. (1997). 198
Brodie’s legacy lives on within the Aboriginal community of Western Adelaide as an advocate for her people. Her drive was to reclaim the land of her grandmother and her ancestors, she wanted to create a place where her people could both learn and teach their culture. And even though she didn’t achieve everything she set out to do, she ultimately fought the government to create in some extent a place for her people. The art work of the Kaurna people reflect bright colours, emotion and the story of their land and nature. The park brings a reflection of the people that once lived there and expresses a place for their people that now use the land, to come together and keep their history alive. Its also imported to note that the waterfront alongside the park tells the story of Tjilbruke who carried his slain nephew along the plains and at ever point where he rested a freshwater spring has been placed.
This project presents an exemplary consultation process with the local Aboriginal community and in particular with the Brodie family, who are specifically connected to this site. This underpins the creation of a culturally meaningful design, in the largest public open space within a new urban residential development in Ethelton, South Australia. Interpretation of the site’s heritage and local significance, selection of endemic plantings, design and crafting of specific site elements, and the skilful sculpting of landform, planting masses and circulation have generated a space of noteworthy sensitivity and gentleness. The built elements in the landscape show high quality, robustness and use of sustainable materials. Throughout Lartelare the design features reflect the Kaurna culture. Planting patterns adjacent to the apartments are indicative of traditional weaving patterns used in making baskets and mats. The same indigenous plants used for making the baskets have been planted in the landscape surrounding the clearings for potential collection and use by local Aboriginal groups looking to share and pass down skills to the younger generations. In the central clearing contains a sculptural element which is similar to the traditional Wodli, a shelter that was built along the banks of the Port River prior to settlement. The lighting contained within the artifact cases, reflect a story told by Aunty Veronica which described an evening landscape prior to European settlement. The story speaks of vegetated river banks flickering with the campfires of aboriginal families. Moiré patterning across the Wodli shelter using perforated sheets of rusted steel was chosen to reflect layers of hessian which was increasingly used in lieu of brush and bark as the river was developed into a port. If we walked among the stone paths and past native coastal vegetation, we would find five large honey coloured rocks. All of these interpretive clearings contain dramatic large split rocks each represent a cultural site. Within the split are aboriginal artifacts housed in resin, each portrayed a different element of indigenous life, including housing, middens (rubbish dumps), tools and significant animals like the Black Swan. Figure 10. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010).
Figure 9. Kaurna Warra. (Smith, 2009). 199
The split rocks was described as a a window into past occupation of the site which was buried when the river was transformed into a wharf. If we walked among the stone paths and past native coastal vegetation, we would find five large honey coloured rocks. All of these interpretive clearings contain dramatic large split rocks each represent a cultural site. Within the split are aboriginal artifacts housed in resin, each portrayed a different element of indigenous life, including housing, middens (rubbish dumps), tools and significant animals like the Black Swan. The split rocks was described as a a window into past occupation of the site which was buried when the river was transformed into a wharf. In 2009 Taylor C Lethlean (the Lartelare designer) was asked by Kaurna community to create five mosaic bench tops, which follows the theme of the park, and celebrated the life of Lartelare. In a time of change, Lartelare’s local habitat, a mangrove swamp rich in sea food and bird life, was be threatened by european arrival. These five mosaic designs each tell there own story but when seen together, they have a larger story to tell. These are hand-cut, glazed ceramic floor tiles. Each panel is 100mm x 1100mm and the tiles are glued to a compressed cement board.
- Kaurna people working on the wharves. This design shows a Kaurna men working as a ‘lumpers’; loading sacks of flour onto a ship. The continuing development of Port Adelaide for the benefit of the Europeans is expressed by removing more of the original landscape.
Figure 13. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010).
- Lartelare working at Glanville Hall. For some Europeans, like Hart, settling in Port Adelaide brought wealth and cause to celebrate. In this design Lartelare is serving party guests at Glanville Hall. Lartelare then was evicted from the land of her birth in 1889, in order for the construction of a sugar refinery.
- Landscape prior to 1836 A geometric pattern underlies this design. All the design elements (Port River, mangroves, wodlies, black swans) are found within this pattern, expressing the idea that everything in this landscape belongs and works together. Figure 14. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010).
- Mangroves The original landscape is now virtually gone. Still the pattern remains, suggesting the potential to rediscover and re-establish some of what has been lost. The young mangrove plant, depicted in colour to express contemporary times and represents this hope for the future and heritage. Also a reminder of the history that lives and the rich deposit that was indigenous (Kaurna) culture and heritage.
Figure 11. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010). - Woman directing ship into Port River. Here the bigger story is starting to emerge. A section of the original landscape has been removed to accommodate the story of an aboriginal woman directing a ship into the mouth of the Port River, which was then hidden by mangroves. The image is depicted in black and white to suggest an old photo. This story is part of aboriginal history. The arrival of Europeans begins the destruction of the original landscape.
Figure 15. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010).
Figure 12. Lartelare mosaic benches. (Tye, 2010). 200
INDIGENEITY HISTORICAL SITE
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Project name: Auckland Domain
Similarities between Aotea and Lartelare Heritage Park: - On both sites endemic vegetation has been used to reflect a sense of place and link it back to the heritage of the site. - Both sites have a cultural significance to the local people. - Local artists where used for the sculptural elements. - Designed in close collaboration with the Brodie family and the Kaurna people and Aotea had influences from the local Maori people. - Aotea Square and Lartelare Park both have large parts of grass area and native vegetation which plays important role to the local people of the area.
Auckland War Memorial Museum Client: Auckland Council Designer: Museum designed by architects - Grierson, Aimer and Draffin Date: Land set aside in 1843 for public Museum opened in 1929
Differences between the two projects: - The difference is the sculptures that are used on site to represent a story of the land to the local people compared to Aotea, which does not have anything significant that tells a strong story about the land or the people. - Aotea was designed for people to come together and as an event space, it is very close in from the surrounding area where as Lartelare is open and acts as a space where people can enjoy the nature and the art works as it tells the story of the people of the land. - Lartelare has a more significant way in telling the story of the people than Aotea. - Aotea is more decorative where as Lartelare and the design elements are more meaningful.
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Budget: Original cost for museum $250,000, 1990’s renovation was $43 million, 2000’s renovation was $64.5million Location: Auckland, New Zealand Dimensions: 185 acres (75 Hectares), N to S – 1170m, E to W – 739m Function: Serves as a large public park or sports fields, a public museum with a memorial for lost soldiers in WW1
Figure 16. Google Earth. (1997). 203
Figure 17. Google Earth. (1997). 204
Auckland domain has several entrances surrounding the perimeter of the site. The two most common entrances are Cenotaph Rd, which comes from a south east direct on, this road links onto the museum circuit which surrounds the museum itself. Domain Dr primarily routes all car and foot traffic throughout the site, along the centre of the domain, providing access to muliple areas and joining the crescent, which leads to Grandstand Rd, Football road and Cenotaph Rd. The museum sits on top of a hill and to the west is a large open public space of grassy knowles and flats, with the hospital in the distance, north west is the botanical gardens, with large amounts of vegetation to the north.
Similarities between Auckland Domain and Lartelare Heritage Park: - Both sites, native flora makes up the majority of the vegetation. - Both sites have rich cultural history before settlement was established.
Differences between the two projects: - Lartelare’s designers consulted the local tribe, the domain didn’t. - Lartelare’s has sculptures strongly reflecting the aboriginal history, the domain focusses largely on European history - Lartelare’s had a larger sense of place than the domain
CONCLUSION Through our investgation of indigeneity as an issue that we as landscape architects face, we have come to the conclusion that it is a way in which we think and reconnect with the land, but it can never be natural and pure like it was in its original state. Overall, Lartelare shows us how design and the traditions of the local Kaurna people come together as one to reconnect the land and the people with one another. It tells a story of purity and spirituality. We have also found cases such as Aotea and Auckland Domain that is not as successful as it is dominated by European culture and in as sense has forgoDen about the indigenous people in some ways. Much like the Lartelare project, the European design are separated from the Kaurna design of the park. Perhaps we should marry the two together, not the forget about the purity of the original.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY: TEXT Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park (1997). Retrieved from http://translate.google.com/translatehl=en&sl=zhCN&u=http://photo.zhulong.com/ylmobile/detail123546.html&prev=search
Main ImageSilbermann, B. (2009). Pinterest. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/449374869040222085/
Amery, R. (2000). Warrabarna Kaurna!: Reclaiming an Australian Language, Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers
Nielsen, K. (2007). World landscape. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/kevin-choy/docs/10x100_landscape
Briton, B. (2002, May 2). My side of the bridge. The story of Veronica Brodie. The Guardian
Otemon. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.otemon.ac.jp/cas/pdf/37/kurita37.pdf
Communist party of Austrlia SA. (2012). Retrieved from http://cpasa.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/nice-park-but-not-what-was-needed.html
Raad, M. (2009). AILA. Retrieved from http://architectureau.com/articles/lartelare-aila-national-awards-1/
Costigan, P. (2010). Aila. Retrieved from Www.aila.org.au
Schultz, D. (2011). TLC. Retrieved from http://www.tcl.net.au/projects/parks-gardens/lartelare
Cunliffe, R. (2010). Sustain:if:able kiwi. Retrieved from http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/archive/sacred-urban-spaces-lartelare-park-port-adelaide/
Scolyer, M. (2009). A Practice Sustained. Retrieved from https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:160654/Cullity.pdf
Gale, F. and Wundersitz, J. (1982). Adelaide Aborigines: a Case Study of Urban Life 1966−1981. Development Studies Centre, Australian National University.
Tindale, N. B. (1974). The Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names, University of California Press
INDIGENEITY, LANGUAGE AND AUTHENTICITY. (2000). Retrieved from https://johansandbergmcguinne.wordpress.com/official-definitions-of-indigeneity/
Tonkinson, R. (1998). ‘National Identity: Australia after Mabo’, in J. Wassmann (ed.), Pacific Answers to Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices of Identity Construction, Berg: 287−309. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_ id=66
Jenkin, G. (1979). Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri, Rigby. Kenny, C. (1996). Women’s Business, Duffy and Snellgrove Kirby, J. (2009 ). Kaurna ties to country. Retrieved from http://www.portenf.sa.gov.au/page.aspx?u=385 Kirby, J. (2009). Ngadluko Yerta. Retrieved from https://www.portenf.sa.gov.au/.../files/Final_Draft.pdf Kokegei, K. (2015). SA History Hub. Retrieved from http://sahistoryhub.com.au/.../colonial-sugar-refinery... Langeveld , R. (2012). Aboriginal Plant Use in south-eastern Australia. Retrieved from http://www. parksaustralia.gov.au/…/…/aboriginal-plantuse.pdf Leane, J. (2012). Port adelaide master plan. Retrieved from http://ourport.com.au/Portals/10/Documents/Resource-Documents/Jensen_Document_Review_Final_April_2012.pdf
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Figure 10. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66
BIBLIOGRAPHY: IMAGES Figure 1. Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park (1997). Retrieved from http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zhCN&u=http://photo.zhulong.com/ylmobile/detail123546.html& Figure 2. Google Earth. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/maps/search/Port+Adelaide,+South+Australia+Completion/@-34.8463173, 138.495576,170m/data=!3m1!1e3 Figure 3. Google Earth. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/maps/search/Port+Adelaide,+South+Australia+Completion/@-34.8463173, 138.495576,170m/data=!3m1!1e3 Figure 4. Diagrame was made by Glenn 24/04/2015
Figure 11. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66 Figure 12. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66 Figure 13. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66 Figure 14. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66 Figure 15. Tye, M. (2010). Lartelare mosaic benches. Retrieved from http://www.michaeltye.com.au/?page_id=66
Figure 5. Flickr. (2009). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/…/lia…/sets/72157642658607484/detail/
Figure 16. Google Earth. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/maps/place/Auckland+Domain/@-36.858931,174.775486,14z/ data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xf00ef62249cc2f0
Figure 6. Flickr. (2009). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/…/lia…/sets/72157642658607484/detail/
Figure 17. Google Earth. (1997). Retrieved from https://www.google.com/maps/place/Auckland+Domain/@-36.858931,174.775486,14z/ data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xf00ef62249cc2f0
Figure 7. Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park (1997). Retrieved from http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zhCN&u=http://photo.zhulong.com/ylmobile/detail123546.html&prev=search
Figure 18. Diagram was made by Glenn 24/04/2015
Figure 8. Adelaide Latelare Aboriginal Heritage Park. (1997). Retrieved from http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zhCN&u=http://photo.zhulong.com/ylmobile/detail123546.html&prev=search Figure 9. Smith, C. (2009). Kaurna Warra. Retrieved from https://www.adelaide.edu.au/kwp/resources/videos/purrutendi.html
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The Landscape of Simulation: Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve 1999 Barnett R. Kerb Journal of Landscape Architecture. Melbourne: RMIT School of Architecture and Design.
The Landscape of Simulation I call my paper The Landscape of Simulation because I want to draw attention to issues of authenticity. A simulation, in the sense I am using it, is a copy of something which has never existed. Because the landscapes of recreation are cultural landscapes they are not only physical, geological, botanical - they are also ideological, social and political. It is this underside of leisure landscapes that is examined here. I will use a New Zealand landscape attraction to show that such environments proffer a simulated image of cohesion and naturalism which has never, and can never, exist.
ABSTRACT Using the tourist landscape of Whakarewarewa Thermal Region as an example, this paper looks at howlandscapes of leisure enter the contemporary world as complex, contested sites which, while they areproducts of market forces, are also highly symbolically charged. Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions. It islocated on the outskirts of the city of Rotorua in a thermal field on the volcanic plateau of the NorthIsland. This plateau itself lies within an earthquake zone that extends around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. A primeval landscape of mud pools, geysers, silica terraces and dribbling sulphate ponds,Whakarewarewa Thermal Park is also a landscape of commerce and commodity, of carved keyrings and snapshots contested by different factions in two hundred years of bitter struggle for economic priority. It is estimated that 90% of tourists to New Zealand visit Whakarewarewa to view the natural wonders and encounter the indigenous Maori who provide their only contact with the primitive Other that they seek. Not only the landscape here is “primeval,” the people who run it are too. The landscape of Whakarewarewa is a hyperreal geography in which spiritual experience is marketed along with the sensual. Selling landscape is a not a new business. But in the late twentieth century there is a terrible poignancy to the business of saving ecosystems in order to use them as the wrappers of a spiritual “gift” which costs $200 a night. This paper explores the myths that underpin the tourist landscape of Whakarewarewa and asks whether landscape professionals should reinforce or reveal these myths.
Many recreational landscapes in New Zealand are situated on land once occupied by the indigenous people, the Maori, who came to New Zealand a thousand years before Europeans colonised it in the nineteen hundreds. These sites often have a history of bitter struggle for ownership and control. Indeed, the modern history of the Maori people in New Zealand is one of resistance to dominance and control by the whites. Since the 1970s, however, there has been a ‘Maori renaissance.’ A widescale reassertion and then acceptance of the right to Maori self-determination, language and cultural values hasmeant that many Maori tribes are once again in control of their lands and natural resources. With a huge increase in tourism (internal and overseas) Maori have found that both their culture and their ancestral lands are in demand as tourist experiences and destinations. In fact, tourism has played no small part in the reestablishment of Maori control over their own destiny as a people. The tourist revenue, both actual and potential, is huge. As a result of this, Maori-owned and operated recreational landscapes enter the contemporary world as complex, contested sites which, while they are products of market forces are also highly symbolically charged. Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve is one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions. Administered by the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute, it includes a reconstruction of a Maori fortified village, various Maori cultural shows, a carving school, an audio-visual display of Maori culture and many souvenir shops. But its main attraction is the fact that it is the largest extant geyserfield in the country.
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Whakarewarewa is located on the outskirts of the city of Rotorua in a thermal field on the volcanic plateau of the North Island. This plateau itself lies within an earthquake zone that extends around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. This recreation landscape is a primeval underworld of sulphur and unbearable heat locked in subterranean passages, a landscape of mud pools, geysers, silica terraces and dribbling sulphate ponds. It is estimated that 90% of tourists to New Zealand visit Whakarewarewa to view the natural wonders - and encounter the indigenous Maori. Encounter the indigenous Maori? It seems that not only the landscape here is ‘primeval,’ the people who run it are too. The landscape of Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve is a themed geography in which landscape elements and social and physical space are not all that have been commodified. Among the other images and projections that are consumed at Whakarewarewa, Maori stand now, perhaps more than anything else, for an abstract archetypal quality as precious to Europeans as gold: spirituality. Tourist brochures commissioned by Maori businesses now make it clear that spiritual experience is marketed along with the sensual. Maori culture is known and revered among New Zealanders for its identification with nature and for the way in which care and respect for natural resources is woven into the lifeway of the people. Implicit in the advertisements for spiritual experience (which are aimed at whites, not other Maori) is the assumption, widespread amongst Maori, that European culture, recoded by capitalism, is spiritually bereft and that Europeans are a people in deep need of spiritual nourishment. Further, there is also the assumption, shared by Maori and European alike that, since the world has become a shopping mall in which everything is, or ought to be, available, spiritual enlightenment can also be purchased. At the landscape of Whakarewarewa everything has become commodified.
And the brochures tell us that we are not primitive. We cannot live in that world or that timeless time of the primitive, even the modern primitive. But we can visit - and that is what the brochures are about. Te Maori Encounter, Marae Overnight Stay, Visit the World of the Maori, Be a Witness to..., Enjoy a Night of..., Experience the Pre-European Lifestyle of... This is a temporary ‘going primitive.’ You can come into our world of mystic oneness with nature, of unrepressed sexuality, of freedom and careless neverending song and play, BUT YOU MUST GO BACK. Back to your circumscribed existence as the fallen conquerors of the primitive within. We have all the things you have lost, the brochures say, and we will parade these wonders before you BUT YOU MUST PAY. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century Europeans had often grumpily noted the rapid conversion of the Maori to the ways of capital: ‘There is an accommodation-house, once kept by the white man at the village, but the Maori possessor of the soil, coveting the small profits made by his white brother, ousted him and assumed control.’ (Harris 1878) ‘Once they were very hospitable, but now the European must pay for almost the words that are spoken to him. To witness one of their ceremonies is tantamount to taking a private box at the opera. They can be very amusing in their way, but the amusement must be paid for, by Europeans at least.’ (Harris 1878) But by the 1920s Maori culture was mostly available for free. During that period of giving up and letting go (the period of assimilation) Europeans were admitted deep into the sanctum sanctorum of Maori defeat. There were no charges at the door of representation. This is the period of the death masks of C. F. Goldie, a painter working in the early years of the tentieth century. His portraits of aged Maori men and women helped establish the conception that Maori were a dying race, a memento of a romantic past. By the 1980s, however, overwhelmed by the ‘logic of late capitalism,’ most aspects of Maori culture had been assigned a monetary value. Maori culture, like that of the European, has become a commodity. This is the reason for and the lesson of Whakarewarewa, the landscape of simulation. The primitive landscape, the primitive culture, the primitive him and herself are all vanished and in their place stand ‘the primitive,’ a construction of Western culture with which the Maori have an intimate complicity. It is at Whakarewarewa that European tourists in New Zealand come closest to the primitive Other that they seek. For Anglo Americans and Europeans New Zealand is nature.
There they are, after all, on the brochures spread before you. They face you boldly, stepping out of their world (depicted behind them as forest, geyserland or carved stockade) into yours. They are half naked; their brown bodies are sleek and muscular. You turn the pages of the brochures. One photograph shows them as savage, frightening wielding clubs of war and challenging you with grotesque expressions. In another they are swaying gently to music, singing and smiling, twirling balls on string. These are Maori. They are violent, fearsome, and they are innocent, childlike. The brochures show us the noble savage who lives in a paradisal, ideal geography, in tune with nature but ready to shred us limb from limb in order to save his world.
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That cleanbgreen country at the end of the world is the place to go to come face to face with untrammelled, ‘unspoilt’ nature. The Maori are part of this natural experience. They are nature too. And this is part of the simulation, for both they and nature no longer exist. The Western conceptualisation of the primitive involves the marking of the native culture as over, as dead and gone, as eternally past, as (the brochure says) ‘a world that unfolds before your eyes as you journey back in time’ in order to ‘experience the spirit of ancestral Maori.’ Even as they present it to you they bury it in the past. A recent commentator says: ‘The real secret of the primitive in this century has often been the same secret as always: the primitive can be - has been, will be?- whatever Euro-Americans want it to be. It tells us what we want it to tell us.’ (Torgovnick 1990) What do we want it to tell us? That, now that it is impossible to be spiritual, the spiritual is just $12.00 a head? Europeans and Maori have at the cracked and fissured landscape of Whakarewarewa entered into an ‘arrangement’. The tourist is a consumer of images, memories, projections and desires. The Maori are doing their best to provide these commodities. What is for sale at Whakarewarewa is participation in the old ways and escape (be it ever so momentary) from the alienation and anomie of the modern world. Of course this arrangement has an ideological function. In fact it has two: not only does this ‘landscape of recreation’ permit a dominant culture to identify an indigenous population with nature in order to legitimise their marginalisation, but it also organises the geothermal landscape as a landscape of consumption similar to more archetypal themescapes such as Disney World. How did this arrangement come about? Whakarewarewa was a contested landscape before the pakeha (white people) came to New Zealand. Two different tribes considered the land theirs by tradition and by right. They were able to coexist in relative harmony until the white people arrived and started buying land around Rotorua in the 1840s. For the whites the Whakarewarewa land was desirable for the same reasons as it was for the Maori who cooked and bathed in the thermal waters, and were kept warm by them in the harsh winter months. By 1853 the settler government was showing a great deal of interest in the area. It was already a tourist attraction, and there is no doubt that the government was keen to alienate the land from Maori for purposes of development and advantage. At this stage the Maori were charging ‘exorbitant rates’ for entry to the thermal area. The Maori, in fact, showed themselves to be ‘able entrepreneurs.’
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They even charged visitors who made sketches of the village and hot springs. ‘In some instances artists had had their sketches torn up and been evicted by villagers unable to extract the necessary fee.’ (Waaka,1982:57). The Minister of Native Affairs intervened, however, and eventually managed to persuade the tribe to overlook these charges ‘as long as the villagers were included in the sketches.’ Using long-standing inter-tribal disagreement as its reason, the Native Land Court partitioned the Whakarewarewa land, awarding much more than an equal share to the tribe with which the government was negotiating to acquire land for the establishment of the new town. After all, interesting famous people had visited the region and written accounts. Tourist brochures and guide books published by travel firms and shipping lines gushed over it. The government saw a great deal of advantage in monopolising Rotorua’s land interests and tourist attractions. One tribe had shown by land gifts and negotiation that they were prepared to assist the government in its ambitions, an attitude which favoured them in their land claims for the Whakarewarewa block. There was much enmity from the other tribe, particularly when the former eventually sold their holding to the government whoimmediately began developing the Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve into a tourist attraction. The Ngati Wahiao tribe, owners of the smaller block, still inhabit it. Visitors to the thermal area wander through their reconstructed village where they sell souvenirs. The village is now known as the ‘residential, cultural and spiritual centre of Whakarewarewa.’ By 1900 the government had purchased and developed Rotorua township, established a sanatorium, the government house and gardens, built a new vehicular bridge to Whakarewarewa and begun its conversion into New Zealand’s ‘premier’ tourist attraction by the construction of the Geyser Hotel. Various spa baths were developed on the site, using the mineral waters that bubbled abundantly from the hot earth. Visitors were able to take the baths and wander around the landscape marvelling at mud pools, geysers, boiling lakes of indescribably beautiful colours and sinter terraces, commenting as they went about the evil smell of sulphur that hung in the air. Maori built ceremonial houses on the land and began to work as guides, also organising concert parties to entertain tourists. Rotorua township syphoned off water from the underground streams. Virtually all the inhabitants of the town had constant, hot mineral water baths in their houses.
Through the twentieth century Maori-pakeha relations became more twisted and complex as the successive governments of New Zealand pursued an assimilation policy which assumed that Maori would forget their language, traditions and customs and become honorary Europeans. The policy nearly worked, but Maori proved resistant to attempts to purge them of the old ways. In fact the increasing participation of Maori in New Zealand society and daily life meant that issues of New Zealand culture and identity were becoming complicated and nuanced. Anglo-European New Zealanders saw the indigenous people as ‘our Maori’ at the same time as they were denying them access to the rights and privileges they themselves enjoyed. Consequently, simultaneous to the promotion of Whakarewarewa as a live Maori enclave, representing landscape and Maori culture as seamlessly natural, and importantly as ‘ours,’ government policy was permitting both the physical landscape of Whakarewarewa and the Maori modifications to it to deteriorate to the point that visitors had to avert their gaze. The main bath house was pulled down in 1939 and the houses in the Maori village rapidly went to ruin. By 1967 the village had ‘long been the target of unfavourable criticism,’ being described as a ‘henhouse’ by the national newspaper (New Zealand Herald 1964). Partly as a result of much negative criticism of Whakarewarewa, partly because the Maori renaissance had commenced, by the 1970s it was decided to redevelop the ‘Thermal Wonderland’ ‘to the standard expected of an international tourist attraction.’ In 1981 the chairman of the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute was reported in the newspaper as saying that ‘America’s Disneyland could teach Whakarewarewa a thing or two...We could take several good things from Disneyland,’ its efficiency, cleanliness, pleasantness, the thematic areas and audio-visual aids, for instance, ‘but we don’t want the razzmatazz.’ (New Zealand Herald 1981) He went on to say that the institute had to tread a fine line between fostering, maintaining and reinvigorating Maori arts and crafts and providing a tourist attraction.
people have made over the years’ (Rowland 1971). At the same time there was a ‘ consensus of opinion’ that ‘the village would lose its character if European-style houses were built.’ The solution recommended by the director of the Arts and Crafts Institute was that the new houses be ‘L-shaped with carved barge boards and other carved and painted features.’ That Maori culture and tradition should return to Whakarewarewa in the 1960s as decoration on otherwise European-style houses is indicative of the way Maori art and tradition reentered New Zealand culture at that period: through the mediation of governmental and local body structures such as the Maori Affairs Department and the Rotorua City Council, and in particular, through funded Maori-run institutions like the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute with one eye on the tourist industry. CONCLUSION The consumption of Maori culture at Whakarewarewa is supported by a landscape that, like Maori-European relations, is shot through with rifts, pressure points, fault lines and fissures. Geologically the place is a threshold, a neither-nor zone, a never-never land. As indigenes the local Maori are on the edge of an Anglo-Europeanised global culture, geologically they are on the edge of the Rotorua Caldera. Social and geological factors have combined to produce a geography of marginalisation in which politics of land tenure, resource use, heritage reports, racialised media representations, redevelopment initiatives, tourist agendas, commercial interests and cultural identification needs blend and clash. This landscape is both a literal place and a symbolic threshold. It is a socially constructed space (a Maori village), a geotype (a thermal area) and a culturally inscribed place (a theme park). Whakarewarewa takes its place in the tourist economy, then, as a site of political, economic and social power. Both European and Maori have an interest in controlling representations of the Whakarewarewa landscape. What is at stake? These representations must appear to be natural rather than situated. The landscape and the people who inhabit it must be seen to be authentic - visitors must touch the real, that is why they have come here. Underpinning all this are a number of myths that are prevalent in New Zealand culture. Among them are the ideas that nature is good and culture is bad, that old is pure and that new is corrupt, that tradition is stable and modernity ephemeral, that Maori are natural and Europeans are not. These powerful cultural signifiers direct all landscape change in this country, including that undertaken by landscape professionals.
How fine this line was, is illustrated by the suggestion, in the 1960s, that the Whakarewarewa village be redeveloped with government assistance. The problem was not so much that multiple ownership of individual sections was ‘rife’, but that a habitable architectural interpretation of traditional Maori housing for modern tourist consumption was required. In 1966 a letter from the Maori Affairs Department to the Secretary of the Whakarewarewa Tribal Committee stated that the department was ‘concerned that the village should show overseas visitors the progress that the Maori
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An Analysis of Rod Barnet’s Landscape of Simulation essay, published in 1999:
In this IFLA Congress Call for Papers participants were invited to consider landscape change as the ‘sensitive expression of culture.’ When I ask myself, What cultural values are expressed in the landscape of Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve? I find it difficult to locate an essential or core value at all. With ambiguous, contested values crossing and recrossing the landscape it seems no longer possible to make clear distinctions between good and bad, cultural and natural, Maori and pakeha or even ugly and beautiful. These things are no longer opposites: ‘...each value or fragment of value shines for a moment in the heavens of simulation, then disappears into the void...’ (Baudrillard 1993). And is Whakarewarewa not simply a microcosm of the global landscape? Is it not, in fact, a defining characteristic of our century that there is no landscape, no culture, no value, not even the spiritual, which is not irradiated by reproduction and simulation? This thought, it seems to me, puts the professional responsibility of the landscape architect neatly into perspective.
Through analysing and studying Rod Barnet’s publication, The Landscape of Simulation, I hope to understand his key ideas of an indigenous landscape. I will also take three main themes in hopes to understand and link them to how we us landscape architects use indigeneity and the sensitivity of the indigenous people. Is it something that we always use when designing or is it something we have been taught to do. In Rods essay he talks about one of New Zealand’s most iconic thermal reserves, Whakarewarewa. The site is based in Rotorua and is snapshot of what the life of the Maori were like, it gives us an identification as nation, at least that’s what it seems on the surface. He uses this site to show how we as designers face this issue, and might even be a global one. Whakarewarewa is home to two Maori tribes, and is arguably the largest geyser site in New Zealand. The site may be home to these tribes and still practice traditional ways, but is it really indigenous, or is it more complex. On the outer shell, the site is a tourist attraction, you pay to see the manmade geysers and learn the ways of the local Maori people. In landscape architecture the issues stands that indigeneity can’t always be the original history. The conflict of war, spiritual believes and even European influences have altered the indigenous people and the way they live. It’s the stories as told by one generation to another, is it really authentic then.
REFERENCES Baudrillard, Jean 1993 The Transparency of Evil Verso: New York Harris, J Chantrey 1878 The Southern Guide to the Hot Lake District of the North Island of NewZealand, Daily Times Office: Dunedin Torgovnick , Marianna 1990 Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives University of Chicago Press: Chicago New Zealand Herald 1964 and 1981 Waaka, PKS 1983 Whakarewarewa: The People and the Place Rotorua Art Gallery/Rotorua Museum Rod Barnett. (2015). Retrived from http://www.nonlinearlandscapes.com/the-tehpoint-guides-to-emergance/
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We as designers face this issue and whether or not we can create an indigenous landscape that is going to reflect the people of the land and tell their story. But we face the complex possibility of tourist attraction or a reference to the indigenous people. Arguably, this is the main point that Rod is trying to get through by referencing and analysing Whakarewarewa. The idea and misleading meaning of indigeneity is usually the history and the stories of the Europeans, not the indigenous people. When in true nature is about the people who settled there first, the people that used the land and its natural resources as their way of life. European culture reflect a more structural way of life, and lack that sense of spirituality. The destruction of WW2 and colonial ties recreated the way we looked at the history and we started to see the indigenous people for who they are and what they believe in. indignity is a form of defying the indigenous people of a landscape, but what about the Westernised history, should we not be included.
Rod aims to explain to us that although these sites of “leisure” are created for that purpose, once it enters our modern world, it becomes products of market forces but are also complex and symbolically charged. (Page 1). “Whakarewarewa Thermal Park is also a landscape of commerce and commodity, of carved key rings and snapshots contested by different factions in two hundred years of bitter struggle for economic priority.”
“Whakarewarewa Thermal Park is also a landscape of commerce and commodity, of carved key rings and snapshots contested by different factions in two hundred years of bitter struggle for economic priority.“ (Page 1) Should we as the designers reinforce the indigenous design? Should we reconnect the roots and establish the original, or is it a practice that never existed? Perhaps, key point two is that are we taking over indigenous design and making it our story through design, we are searching for something, or are the indigenous people themselves recreating their natural and pure history?
(Page 1). Perhaps, Rod is trying to argue that indigenous landscape cannot exist, they are merely snapshot into what life for the indigenous people was and the way they lived. It can never be original, but can it stay natural. The first key point is established here, is an indigenous landscape merely a look into the indigenous people, or has it never existed, been destroyed by colonisation and reproduction? Barnet would argue that it is not, there is no evidence or ideas of indigenous people, just the stories that they have left behind.
“European culture, recoded by capitalism, is spiritually bereft and that Europeans are a people in deep need of spiritual nourishment.” (Page 3) Should we address the Maori people or are we just doing it so that we can give the people the spiritual healing they are looking for, in this process the Maori culture itself is reproduced, and is not the same as it was. Can it be pure and can it be natural or is it simply a way of making it a tourist attraction – are the indigenous people of the land really indigenous if they themselves promote the land as something to come and see and experience.
At Whakarewarewa what we are supposed to experience is the Maori way of life and their connection to the land. But what we truly get is a bit of everything. The Maori, the European history, colonisation and the reproduction of these stories and historical references and the natural ecology and vegetation of the site.
Rod would argue yes, as this following quote suggests: “Whakarewarewa was a contested landscape before the pakeha (white people) came to New Zealand. Two different tribes considered the land theirs by tradition and by right. They were able to coexist in relative harmony until the white people arrived and started buying land around Rotorua in the 1840s. For the whites the Whakarewarewa land was desirable for the same reasons as it was for the Maori who cooked and bathed in the thermal waters, and were kept warm by them in the harsh winter months. By 1853 the settler government was showing a great deal of interest in the area. It was already a tourist attraction, and there is no doubt that the government was keen to alienate the land from Maori for purposes of development and advantage. At this stage the Maori were charging ‘exorbitant rates’ for entry to the thermal area. The Maori, in fact, showed themselves to be ‘able entrepreneurs.’ They even charged visitors who made sketches of the village and hot springs.” (Page 6).
On page one he states: “It is estimated that 90% of tourists to New Zealand visit Whakarewarewa to view the natural wonders and encounter the indigenous Maori who provide their only contact with the primitive other that they seek. Not only the landscape here is “primeval,” are the people who run it too. The landscape of Whakarewarewa is a hyperreal geography in which spiritual experience is marketed along with the sensual.” Rod argues that there is no sense of indigenous cultural- it’s purely a tourist attraction that they are selling, to fill the empty Europeans with spiritual connection and culture. Rod argues that what we are seeing is simply a simulation, a snapshot into the culture. They are giving us what we want to see, and we are paying for it. At Whakarewarewa, we pay to see the warriors and the village and how they live daily, but is it telling the story of the past, of the people that first occupied the land, or are we just getting what they want to show us. Isn’t there more, isn’t there the history, the wars, the fight for their land, it’s not real, and it’s a simulation.
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Basically Rod is arguing that although colonisation and the recreation of the natural landscape can be based on the European influences, the Maori people themselves created this window of opportunity of themselves, and promoted the idea of ‘indigenous people’ themselves. They give as an understanding of their way of life and what they believe in. As in Whakarewarewa case, the Maori themselves became entrepreneurs from their own indigenous landscape and their spirituality.
Here Rod is saying that Europeans creates a cheap version of the insight into the Maori culture, and much like them, the Maori consume themselves with the idea of ‘selling their culture’ and therefore also loses there sense of indigenous beliefs and traditions. Key points: Key point one The first key point is established here, is an indigenous landscape merely a look into the indigenous people, or has it never existed, been destroyed by colonisation and reproduction? • Do we as landscape architects face this issue daily, within our designs and does it shape the way we think of a landscape. • Can indigenous design be recreated or do we give it another term, such as reproducing.
“Through the twentieth century Maori-pakeha relations became more twisted and complex as the successive governments of New Zealand pursued an assimilation policy which assumed that Maori would forget their language, traditions and customs and become honorary Europeans.” (Page 6). Rod explains that recreation is a big part of the idea of indigenous landscape, because it is not in its purest form any more. It has been influenced in new ways by the colonisation, historical events and European ways have altered the way in which they think and live. It is important to note that Rod highlights the importance of Whakarewarewa was redeveloped as a Thermal Wonderland in the 1970’s. He argues this to be the result of Maori renaissance and the negative criticism the site has received. He mentions this on page 6 and also adds onto page 7; “How fine this line was, is illustrated by the suggestion, in the 1960s, that the Whakarewarewa village be redeveloped with government assistance. The problem was not so much that multiple ownership of individual sections was ‘rife’, but that a habitable architectural interpretation of traditional Maori housingfor modern tourist consumption was required.” Key point 3 reflects the idea that it has now become a reproduced product, can we all be part of this primitive idea of indigenous design? He goes on to explain the controversies over Whakarewarewa and how the traditional Maori huts were recreated to reflect a more modern, colonised reference to European architecture. The Maoris argued that Whakarewarewa showed how the Maori has evolved over the years. “The consumption of Maori culture at Whakarewarewa is supported by a landscape that, like Maori-European relations, is shot through with rifts, pressure points, fault lines and fissures. Geologically the place is a threshold, a neither-nor zone, a never-never land.” (Page 7)
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Key point two: Key point two is that are we taking over indigenous design and making it our story through design, or are the indigenous people themselves recreating their natural and pure history? • Although European settlement alters the indigenous culture of the Maoris, don’t they in a sense become part of the culture as new ways are adapted? • We as the designers recreate these images of nature in purity through links within our designs. Key Point three: Key point 3 reflects the idea that it has now become a reproduced product, can we all be part of this primitive idea of indigenous design? • We should become one with the cultural and spiritual ideas of the indigenous people, thus then creating a landscape that reflect all of our needs. What I take from this Rod’s essay is the reoccurring theme of an indigenous landscape design not existing. It can never be natural and pure again. It will always have the influences of colonisation and European settlement, it has evolved and continues to reproduce. The aim is for us a landscape architects to create links and snapshots of the history and the stories of the indigenous people, but you can never copy or recreate the exact scene, as it reproduces and adds to the stories and the symbolism.