Merit Award
EDAW (Brisbane).
North Lakes Residential Community, Mango Hill, Queensland

North Lakes re-interprets the Garden City, integrating contemporary environmental dimensions and avoiding superficial application of New Urbanist ideals.

The landscape design of this project pursues a new ecological aesthetic for green fields suburban development at township scale, applying sound ecological principles in all areas and at all stages of the development process.

Its comprehensive approach and standards of landscape design and delivery are to be encouraged for all new suburbs and residential estates.

Project Award
Taylor Cullity Lethlean
and Mary Jeavons Landscape Architect.
Carlton Gardens Playground, Melbourne.

An original and inspiring design that successfully integrates the diverse agendas posed by:
- the nineteenth century Victorian landscape of Carlton Gardens;
- the dramatic formal imagery of the recently completed Museum of Victoria with its Children’s Gallery; and,
- children who simply want somewhere exciting and challenging to play.

All have been satisfied in this skilfully realised design which demonstrates that, when complimentary skills are respected, specialist collaborations can deliver landscapes of impressive vision and creativity.

A flamboyant yet subtle amalgam of sinuous landforms and walls and safe, if eccentric, play structures.

Merit Award
Phillips Marler.
Ironbark Ridge, Rouse Hill NSW

This simple, delightful project demonstrates that significant improvements can be made to open spaces on the suburban fringe and importantly, that these can be achieved cost effectively.

The strong concept and relationship to place is clearly expressed, challenging standard approaches to the making of parks and park buildings.

Merit Award
HASSELL.
Margate Foreshore, Queensland

The deceptive simplicity of this project on the bay foreshore belies the sensitivity and sophistication underlying its design.

By carefully selecting, placing and inserting a few new elements which are carefully designed with reference to vernacular forms (including the ubiquitous Queensland shed and verandah) and using local materials, the designers have given this foreshore new life without threatening its modest charm.

Merit Award
PARC Consortium (Gillespies & Landplan Studio).
3 Roma Street Parklands, Brisbane

The Jury applauds the planting design for this project, which creativity and skilfully adapts Queensland’s long tradition of horticultural display to interpret many of the state’s unique indigenous environments, making them accessible and interesting to urban dwellers.

By demonstrating the horticultural potential and interest of so many species, the designers have made a major contribution to environmental appreciation and values.

Project Award
Taylor Cullity Lethlean
Geelong Waterfront, Victoria

Since the first stages of this project received a merit award in the 1998 National Awards, the succeeding phases of this project have contributed to a coherent sequence of related spaces including the waterfront boat harbours.

The earlier promise has now been realised in full and at a substantial scale.

Sustained commitment to the expression of local meaning has resulted in a landscape design that delights and excites its users by creating spatial variety and a strong relationship with the elemental qualities of water, wind, sun and sky.

A designed precinct of impressive rigour and resolution supported by a skilfully managed and integrated art program.

Project Award
Tract Consultants
QUT, Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane

Not only have the incoherent jumble of buildings and spaces that previously comprised this campus been given coherence by this series of projects, they have been given identity, liveliness and a sense of fun appropriate to the bustling student body of over 20,000 students and the spectacular location of the campus on Gardens Point bounded by the City Gardens and the Brisbane River.

Originating in an overall masterplan, this suite of projects is truly impressive in its scope and depth.

By resisting temptations to over-dignify the spaces, a strong character and identity appropriate to the institution has been achieved, despite the mixed and mediocre building stock.

A testament to a consistently applied design approach.

Merit Award
Taylor Cullity Lethlean
Forest Gallery, Museum of Victoria

While acknowledging debates about the wisdom of memorialising landscapes such as the Mountain Ash Forests within the museum environment, the jury applauds the strong educational focus, impressive technical achievements and innovation evident in this project.

Although lacking detail resolution in some areas, this design is visionary, conceptually rigorous and a spectacular technical achievement on a very constrained site.

Merit Award
Taylor Brammer
Anzac Commemorative Site, Gallipoli Turkey

The beachfront on the Anzac peninsula is evolving as one of Australia’s "sacred sites".

The design of the infrastructure for ceremonies and individual visits is appropriately restrained and respectful of the setting and the history, enabling the dramatic topography and its memories to speak out unimpeded.

Simple and robust, this design avoids traditional memorialising devices.

It employs local materials and the simplest of forms to create a powerful new place of pilgrimage for Australians appropriately balancing cultural and natural heritage.

Project Award
Pittendrigh Shinkfield and Bruce.
Green and Gold Bell Frog Habitat at Homebush Bay, NSW

This project demonstrates mastery of the complex process of creating successful and specific habitats for other species.

The frogs have vindicated the design approach by a burgeoning population and the design demonstrates that an environment that to some might appear of little use, ugly and untidy, is in fact one of real ecological value.

The jury applauds the sense of natural and cultural history made tangible through the use of the brickpit for this purpose.

Merit Award
Barwick and Associates
Bass Highway Westbury By-pass, Tasmania

In an environment such as Tasmania, which is experienced primarily by road, the importance of roadside quality cannot be underestimated.

This project successfully demonstrated alternative approaches to the landscape of the Tasmanian road by eschewing overtly historicist approaches and asserting the value and place of natural heritage in the roadside experience.

A bold approach to roadside restoration that not only adapted and tested new techniques in the Tasmanian situation but was cost effective as well, challenging entrenched attitudes to what is achievable with the use of appropriate skills

Project Award
Tract Consultants
Manly Interchange NSW

This design successfully resolves a long standing and complicated problem on a confined site where cars, buses, pedestrians and ferries converge.

The clever re-organisation of the various elements within the limited space available has produced a site of legibility and even dignity, an appropriate entrance to one of Sydney’s most popular destinations.

Simple and robustly detailed with a character well attuned to its waterfront location.

Merit Award
Spackman Mossop
Moore Park Bus Interchange, Sydney

A clever resolution of a site with dual and conflicting purposes -- as a park and bus interchange.

The design manages the intense periodic use of the site by substantial crowds through re-organization of paths, pavements and roads and signals these in the broader landscape by definitive avenue planting, innovative lighting and signs.

A skilful command of scale and site organization achieves a seamless transition from the traditional parklands to the entrances to the major recreational facilities.

A valuable improvement of the experience of public transport the site of many major Sydney events.

Project Award
Sue-Anne Ware.
"An Anti-Memorial to Heroin Over-doses",
St Kilda, Victoria

This ephemeral artwork achieved its experiential impact by the skilful selection and siting of a series of everyday objects which were, through the process, transformed and imbued with new meaning.

A creative and timely fusion of local place, people and objects, this work demonstrated that landscape architecture can, as put by the designer, be a powerful "physical catalyst for social change" even at the most local of scales and in the shortest of time frames.