AILA and the Climate Change Adaptation Skills for Professionals Program

RESIDENTIAL

CARAL ECOVILLAGE

Project planning for a self-sustaining ecovillage for 180 homes on defunct canefields near Hervey Bay, Queensland.

Landscape Principles in Practice:

Value Our Landscape: A landscape-based approach to placemaking, employing innovative community-based processes in design and planning of the ecovillage. Design responds to local landscape structure and character, and reverses conventional ratios of private/public space allocation to prioritise landscape values in design solutions.
Protect – Enhance – Regenerate: Significant existing landscape systems adjoin and intersect the site and are used as primary drivers for integrating landscape within the residential development - retaining 70% of the site for communal landscapes within the ecovillage.
Design with Respect: Innovative use of landscape form & character to drive subdivision planning – landscape performs multifunctional roles to address social, economic and environmental needs. The community title structure allows a much higher level of environmental targets to be achieved than traditional suburban subdivision codes favoured by local authorities.
Design for the Future: Existing landscape informs and guides future development, to enhance social and ecological resilience. Design proposes new ways of approaching suburban typologies to achieve market satisfaction without sacrificing landscape function & integrity.
Embrace Responsive Design: Project employs landscape architecture as a catalyst for integrating new technologies within changing social, economic and environmental conditions to create more responsive design solutions in urban developments.