CHAPTER SEVEN
Reconciling the Australian Square
Fiona Johnson and Jillian Walliss
The urban square is one of most enduring colonial imports into Australian cities, culturally and politically. Adelaide, Australia’s celebrated colonial planned city, features five public squares, with the largest, named Victoria Square (until 2002), occupying the centre of Colonel Light’s 1837 grid. Conceived without a square, Melbourne is considered to have lacked a civic heart until the competition for Federation Square in 1997. It is therefore not surprisingly that the political intent to enact processes of Reconciliation in the urban domain has drawn designers, planners and politicians towards the re-conceptualisation of the square in the Australian city. This chapter explores how Adelaide and Perth, two capital cities with a strong contemporary Indigenous presence, have reconceived the role of civic squares. Adelaide’s Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga Square, dissected and bounded by major roads, has struggled for decades to perform as a vibrant civic space. This is despite the square being significant to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. It is notable, for instance, as the first place in Australia to fly an Aboriginal flag in recognition of land rights for Aboriginal people. In 2009 landscape architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL), in collaboration with architects Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, led the development of a revitalising masterplan which aimed to enable “a new civic life reflective of our 21st century culture to emerge.”1 In contrast to Adelaide, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority (MRA) sought to develop a new civic square for Perth as part of a city-wide plan to better connect the central railway precinct to surrounding suburbs and introduce an entertainment precinct, public open space and commercial redevelopment. Opened in 2018, Yagan Square was designed as a collaboration between Lyons Reconciling the Australian Square
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