Landscape Architecture Australia

Landscape Architecture Australia is an authoritative and contemporary record of landscape architecture, urban design and land-use planning in Australia, providing independent reviews of public, commercial and residential projects, plus independent, commissioned comment on the issues facing landscape architecture and its practitioners today. It Is the national magazine of the Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA).

Contributors

Landscape Architecture Australia

IMPROVING BIODIVERSITY AND GREEN SPACE IN OUR CITIES

MAKING A DIFFERENCE THROUGH CLIMATE-POSITIVE DESIGN • A message from AILA Climate Positive Design Working Group chair, Martin O’Dea

Noticeboard

Rethinking our approach to urban green space provision • Despite the many benefits of green space, its supply in our Australian cities is being met with a multitude of challenges. Can we develop a more effective approach?

Wanting words: Language and landscape • Words are powerful. If we don’t have the language to describe our relationship with the natural world and our uniquely Australian landscape features, ecologies and systems, can we successfully design for them?

Gathering community: Booyeembara Park • Designed in the late 1990s on the site of a former limestone quarry, the concept for Booyeembara Park was only ever partially completed. Yet despite this, the park has grown relationships between council and community.

Green rooms: Creating an indoor vertical wetland • A project at The University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute deployed a team of registered horticulturists to improve the campus’s built environment.

Lateral movements • The upgrade of Kingsford Smith Drive by Lat27 enhances experiences of the Brisbane River while illuminating women’s contributions to the city’s history.

Interpretive acts • Aspect Studios’ design for Pentridge Piazza Coburg elegantly interprets the site’s sombre history, yet raises deeper questions about the value of discomfort.

Bringing back biodiversity • Sarah Hicks spoke with ecologist Damien Cook about his environmental restoration work and how we can improve biodiversity in our urban and regional areas.

Tidal encounters • On the NSW Central Coast, Turf Design Studio has created a vibrant park and community hub that reconnects the city of Gosford with its pre-European histories and ecologies.

Manufacturing opportunities for play • A vibrant playground in the Victorian locality of Mambourin combines active and imaginative elements and offers unique opportunities for educational play.

Texture and temporality • In the leafy Brisbane suburb of St Lucia, Dan Young Landscape Architect has created an introspective garden of close encounters.

Deep North • Artist and photographer Matthew Stanton examines the shifting relations between humans and the environment in a photographic series that documents the ecologically complex landscapes of Queensland’s Wet Tropics.

Lo-fi landscapes • Terremoto (US) and Wagon Landscaping (France) are part of a group of small, young and nimble practices that are exploring a semi-informal, DIY approach to designing and constructing landscapes that elevates imperfection as an aesthetic choice.

FIRST PROJECT • Bob Earl, founding partner of Oculus, reflects on the design of Loyalty Square in Sydney’s inner west and the launch of Oculus’s Australian studio in the late ‘90s.