Australian Institute of Landscape Architects   
 New South Wales Group Award Projects         
     
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2005 NSW Awards in Landscape Architecture
announced Wednesday 30th November 2005

NSW Award Introduction and Jury Citations

AILA NSW Project Awards

It is important to note that the Awards are conducted, not as a means of attributing special attention to particular practices, nor with the purpose of competition , or as a means of capturing professionals within an institutional framework, but rather to document the important body of landscape architectural engagement in the state of New South Wales.

The aim of the awards is to assemble, evaluate, publish and promote the work of landscape architects. We would like to think that all local government groups and practices in NSW will have something to put forward as representative of their work and that this will form the base for the cannon of work currently in NSW.

The 2005 NSW Award Juries represented a rich cross section of professionals from a broad activity base including urban designers, artists, journalists, writers, planners, environmental experts, organisational leaders, and landscape architects who will add a diversity of opinion to the jury process.

Design: Sue Barnsley-chair, Anton James, Garth Patterson, Jen Turpin , Journalist (tbc)

Environment: Mark Blanche-chair, Tony Wong, Simon Leake, Ingrid Mather

Planning: Oriana Senese-chair, Peter Droege, Steve Corbett, Margaret Petrykowski

Research and Communication: Scott Hawken-chair, Ken Brass

The Sydney Greenspace Award was presented by the Minister, focusing on significant contributions by local government to open space in NSW.

An award for Residential Design was awarded as a lead-in to the National Edna Walling Award in 2006.

This is the opportunity to showcase NSW body of work in a broad professional context and to represent the development of Landscape Architecture in NSW over the last couple of years. We are looking forward to receiving your submission and compiling the cannon

AILA NSW State Award for Excellence

McGregor + Partners
Former BP Site Public Parkland, Waverton

This is a landscape that is immediately engaging and which invites discovery. It has an iconic setting but it does not rely on view. It is a powerful, robust and ragged landscape, lyrical yet unsentimental and an antidote to places which are highly prescriptive and overly detailed.

The Former BP Site Public Parkland, Waverton is captivating precisely because it has been formed with clarity and restraint. Minimal intervention, public access and a strong philosophy towards urban ecological restoration and site regeneration have been fundamental to the making of this park. It evokes its industrial past offering new ways of seeing the site and recalling memories of Sydney’s working harbour. The massive sandstone cuttings, the remnant walls, scarified rock platforms, service pipes and modest steps, soaks, weeds and gnarly edges of angophoras are all drawn into a powerful composition, which resonates with its contemporary use.

The rough quality of the park with its reliance on natural systems and indigenous species will minimise maintenance and set a new ecology for the park. The use of local provenance species re-establishes links to the bushland of Balls Head and sets a strong precedent both ecologically and aesthetically for the planning of other harbour sites, particularly the twin site of the Coal Loader on Waverton Peninsula.

Significantly the park advances the work of Harry Howard and Bruce McKenzie in the making of Sydney’s harbour parklands and forms part of a wider discourse on the remaking of post industrial sites world wide, where it is indebt to the work of Peter Lahtz in particular.

This new park is not a simple municipal park but a regional foreshore park with links to adjacent bush and parkland, whilst in critical proximity to Sydney’s symbolic centre. It is a resource for everyone. The strength of its aesthetic provokes visitors to reconsider natural environments and everyday history.

We congratulate the office of McGregor + Partners for their work at the Former BP Site Public Parkland, Waverton.

2005 AILA NSW President's Award

David Tooby

This year the Presidents Award has been for excellence in regional landscape architecture or landscape planning. It is an opportunity for AILA NSW to encourage and support landscape architects working outside of metropolitan Sydney. In many cases in regional areas, clients and councils have had little opportunity to work with landscape professionals before. In a context where client’s expectations and budget may be minimal the landscape architect has a strong advocacy role in relation to landscape design and the environment.

The Presidents Award for 2005 goes to David Tooby for his long time work as an advocate for landscape architecture and its agenda in the regions. In particular this award is for his work as part of the King & Campbell Pty Ltd team on landscape planning for Port Macquarie as part of the Ecove-Riverpark Road project. David Tooby’s document is clear and concise and represents a comprehensive analysis of urban design for the CBD. Hastings Council should also be commended for commissioning this valuable work which sets the benchmark for future planning in the region.

2005 NSW Planning Minister's Sydney Greenspace Award

Auburn Council
Town Centre Public Art Design Framework

The NSW Planning Minister’s Sydney Greenspace Award was developed to recognise outstanding contribution and leadership by local government in the development and enhancement of Sydney Greenspace in partnership with other Councils, the NSW Government, private organisations or community groups.

This year the Planning Minister’s Award goes to Auburn Council for their engaging community focused work in the public domain.

It has been an objective of the NSW Department of Planning, through both the Metropolitan Strategy and its long running open space embellishment programs, to encourage a balance between conserving our natural and cultural resources and creating places for recreational enjoyment. In particular, a key aim of the government is to support infrastructure refurbishment in areas facing increased population densities, such as Auburn.

Auburn Council’s Town Centre Public Art Design Framework encourages the diverse cultures and user groups within the community to take part in the development and renewal of its civic spaces. Within Auburn Council local government area, Sydney Greenspace is at a premium. This framework focuses on liveability and identity of the town centre.
 

PLANNING IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

2005 AILA NSW Excellence Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

Spackman & Mossop
Camden Valley Way

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • A thorough background study which displayed a critical assessment and development of the brief, planning issues facing the development of roads in the Sydney basin and responding to the landscape and environment was well presented in this document.
  • A thorough examination of landscape planning precedents to define issues rather than simply forming a kit of part for replication in the road corridor. This related to sound barriers, safety, landscaping and thorough appreciation of the surrounding landscape - in particular, establishing the theoretical, strategic and practical basis for not repeating mistakes of the past. This included benchmarking against other state and regional road and networks.
  • Exemplary document setting a benchmark for strategic road planning.
  • Clear graphics, well presented and easily navigable.

Environmental responsibility

  • The preservation of scenic character not simply left as objectives but protected through detailed analysis and landscape proposals, excellent Tree Management Plan detailed in the document.
  • Recognition of the importance of the road as an experience of “nature” in its own right.

Professional, Public, Education

  • Good precedent document for other road corridor studies and other RTA commissions.
  • RTA should be commended for engaging landscape architects at the initial stages – excellent model for future studies.
  • Character of SW sector promoted and protected.
  • Demonstrated expert independence advice.
  • Road environment itself is very important.
  • Questions normal practices and suggests alternatives.
  • Consultation with councils, stake extensive consultation throughout the project.

2005 AILA NSW Excellence Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

Context
Ballast Point Masterplan

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • Exemplary model for a masterplan report for a specific site including detailed analysis and precedent studies to inform design.
  • Clear, concise, beautifully illustrated and excellent graphic display of the masterplan.
  • Appropriate intermediate between step between a higher level policy (SEPP56 Harbour side sites) and a detailed DA which could be the next step.
  • Exemplary study for how to approach planning for sites with significant industrial heritage and dealing with contamination. Whilst, retaining many elements as integral functional parts of the design - not simply objects or elements to be looked at from a distance.
  • Develops a mix of recreational uses within the parkland and so sets a precedent for multiple use of open space. These spaces become more important in urban parks including access from the water and support functions for harbour activity (ie. refuelling of ferries).
  • The design has a rich layering of hard landscape elements (underlying sandstone, remnant concrete walls, stairs and industrial elements with a functional (shade, grassed picnic areas) and restorative indigenous planting.
  • Exceptional attention to detail to integrate existing and extend.
  • The need for “interpretation” is minimised by the amount of fabric that are proposed to be retained which will make the site history and function legible.
  • Interventions are subtle and in keeping with the straight-forward pragmatism of the previous development on the site.

Environmental responsibility

  • Surface water collection and treatment.
  • Water harvesting.
  • Re planting of indigenous native species.
  • Decontamination of the site.

Professional, Public, Education

  • Highly professional graphics - benchmark document.
  • Shows (belatedly) what would have been possible on many of the harbour-side industrial sites that have been erased in the past decade.
  • A high level of community involvement was evident but managed to achieve a good outcome for the broader community.
  • In parkland of regional significance such as this (on the harbour and acting as one of the gateways to a reach of the harbour) it is often difficult to balance the expectations of the local community, neighbours and the broader interests and needs of the city. This scheme does this with great acclaim.
  • Overall an excellent demonstration of what can be achieved if retaining as much as possible of the existing fabric as a primary and explicit planning objective.

Merit Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture
Auburn Town Centre Public Art Design Framework

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • A sophisticated and innovative framework for considering urban space and its public domain.
  • The conceptual framework almost seamlessly becomes the spatial framework for the structure of the town centre
  • Each analytic drawing is accompanied by rich and explanatory images which mean they are not simply drawings but become fully fleshed out “ideas” which are comprehensible.
  • These ideas are then elaborated as a series of overlays of various systems for example lighting, banners and enclosure for the whole centre

Environmental responsibility

  • Responsive environmental issues to improving the environment of the Auburn Town Centre for its residents.

Professional, Public, Education

  • A clear and most importantly engaging document – for the community that conveys the excitement of an urban centre and its potential a vibrant future.
  • An excellent basis for further detailed studies / presentations.
  • Easy to see how this could be turned into an exhibition.
  • The conceptual framework of vertical and horizontal surfaces and canopy and the movement through space as well as the strong definition of individual precincts and places is an inspiration for all landscape architects / practitioners.

Merit Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

McGregor + Partners
Green Square Public Domain Plans

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • Model of how to develop a strategic approach to detailing of the public domain to adapt to all conditions of the streetscape.
  • Concise document.
  • Very clear structure.
  • Dropping down in scale from overall urban design strategy to detailed design – an effective iteration and interpretation of the desired character of the area to the detailed design.

Environmental responsibility

  • Stormwater management.
  • Heat island reduction- creation of a coll shaded ambience.
  • Urban fauna habitat / ecological bio-diversity.
  • Improvement in air quality.

Professional, Public, Education

  • Innovative layout and structure of the document.

Commendation Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

HASSELL
Regional Recreation Trails Strategy

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • Comprehensive, detailed and strategic planning report, detailed inventory and mapping across the Sydney Basin
  • Great document because it advocates walking/cycling over car travel
  • New directions - whole of government approach to planning
  • Provides the framework for State and Local government development of open space

Environmental responsibility

  • Promotes experience and contact with nature.
  • Encourages environmental protection.
  • Promotes connection with natural and cultural heritage.

Professional, Public, Education

  • The beginning of an alternative network- the tantalising prospect of walking and cycling for miles in safety surrounded by “nature”- an alternative way of experiencing the city.
  • Strategic approach to community involvement and excellent case studies as illustrative examples.

Commendation Award for Planning in Landscape Architecture

HBO+EMTB Urban and landscape Design with Lee Andrews Landscape Design
Bonner Residential Estate, ACT

Planning excellence and functional quality

  • This project needs to be commended for its comprehensive and well considered landscape, environmental and urban design analysis.
  • The project incorporates site’s natural features with the permeable layout of streets, landscape corridors and local parks and public spaces.
  • The resulting layout is permeable and well connected to local roads and landscape features. The structure plan handles well sites topography.
  • Local facilities, such as the primary school and shops are centrally located and accessible by walking.
  • The jury preferred option 1 and 2 rather than the preferred option, which appears to have been chosen on the basis of economics and which does not have the many attributes of the other options.

Environmental responsibility

  • Compact site layout encouraging walking to local amenities within the estate.
  • Centrally located public facilities and permeable street grid encouraging cycling and walking.

Professional, Public, Education

  • Project demonstrates comprehensive understanding of the site’s attributes that inform future subdivision layout.
  • Landscape and urban design analysis and findings are presented in a very simple and legible format.
  • Illustrations communicate well the ideas.

RESEARCH & COMMUNICATION in Landscape Architecture

Merit Award for Research & Communication in Landscape Architecture
Turf Design
Salad Bar Prototype Vertical Garden Installation

‘ Salad bar’ by Turf Design adapts existing hydroponic technologies to transform popular Australian suburban types such as the vegetable garden and beverage bar in a way that make them suitable for the contemporary challenges of high density living and water restrictions. The exhibition piece is both popular and serious in its engagement of issues such as environmental sustainability and the need for productive gardens within cities. These ideas are communicated in a clear and playful way.

While the exhibition piece relies on a history of research and experimentation by others such as the French botanist Patrick Blanc, it extends the technology beyond the aesthetic to the practical creation of productive gardens.

The jury wishes to make special mention of the context for the installation: the Gardens of the Future exhibition. This was organised by Steven Hammond, the former AILA NSW president Penny Allan and the former Government Architect, Chris Johnson. While the event was held as a once off to celebrate the Year of the Built Environment the jury encourages AILA to run the garden exhibition as a regular event to promote innovation and exploration in garden design in the same way as the Chaumont Garden Festival in France. A regular festival could find a permanent home in Millennium Parklands.

Demonstrates a deep understanding of the craft of landscape architecture

  • Contemporary technologies are presented in a playful way.
  • Responds cleverly to the limited growing time available.

Environmental responsibility

  • Responds to water restrictions and the need for increasingly dense cities.

New directions and innovations

  • Good communication of the importance of inserting new sustainable programs into the urban context.

Clarity of purpose and process (methodology)

  • Makes the application of hydroponic technology easily understood.

Quality of content, outcomes and presentation

  • Presented as a successful fusion of the quaint vegetable patch and the ‘lifestyle’ bar.

Usefulness to and practical application by the intended audience

  • Both relevant and useful to the domestic gardener.

Overall significance to the relevance to the profession

  • Highlights the role of the landscape architect in interpreting and making technology available in a way that is relevant to society and the environment.

Ability to further understanding of the profession in the community

  • Successfully communicates serious issues in an accessible and playful way.

Potential for application of findings to other situations

  • Contributes to the ongoing practical task of making hydroponics work in the domestic and urban environments.

ENVIRONMENT in Landscape Architecture

Merit Award for Environment in Landscape Architecture

Turf Design
Salad Bar Prototype Vertical Garden

The Salad Bar was featured in the 2004 Year of the Built Environment Future Gardens exhibition held in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. The purpose of the exhibition was to demonstrate how the ethics of environmental sustainability could be practically incorporated into contemporary living.

The idea was born out of a brief that called for lateral thinking within the context of sustainability and the urban garden, including ideas such as Water Sensitive Urban Design, recycling, biodiversity, and productive gardens, with these ideas to be re-interpreted in new ways that would find a harmonious balance between compact forms of human habitation and the ecosystems that support them.

The resulting Salad Bar is an elegant, highly imaginative and beautifully executed example of landscape design, which skillfully re-interprets the backyard ‘veggie patch’ into a playful vision of contemporary self sufficiency. Through its micro-scale and multi-layered exploration of issues (such as water recycling, economical utilization of space, modular construction and self-sufficiency for food production at the domestic scale) it provides both a visually sophisticated and functional concept that can be applied to-day, and an experimental platform from which further development could investigate issues such as the treatment of stormwater or grey water.


Commendation Award for Environment in Landscape Architecture

Pittendrigh Shinkfield Bruce Pty Ltd
Lakewood Vegetation Management Plan

In the Lakewood Vegetation Management Plan, PSB provides a best practice document that is clear and well presented. It contains state of the art responsiveness to site analysis, conserving existing site resources and integrating them to fulfil a new multi-purpose urban role. The resulting landscape not only provides a place for human recreation but seeks to conserve and manage a component of nature in a sustainable manner. While acting to contain and remediate urban stormwater pollution the open space resource has the capacity to educate and inform the community of indigenous history, as well as the beauty and environmental values of natural systems.

This is a serious attempt to demonstrate that urban development and indigenous flora and fauna are not mutually exclusive elements. The document showcases a number of initiatives that go beyond the standard guideline requirements including the use of techniques such as native sod translocation and experimentation in direct seeding.
Another initiative which seeks to add depth and layering to the project is the attention to the rehabilitation of the aquatic habitat retained on the site with the reintroduction of local provenance fish, shellfish and crustaceans.

PSB have demonstrated a profound understanding and empathy with natural processes and the edaphic sorting of vegetation types using a variety of pre-adapted elements, to recreate the visual and ecological complexities of the natural environment in a highly urbanised setting.

PSB's Lakewood is a very good example of the role riparian corridors can perform
in the new urban ecology, and the art of its conservation and restoration.


DESIGN in Landscape Architecture

Award of Excellence for Design in Landscape Architecture

McGregor + Partners in association with North Sydney Council
Former BP Site Public Parkland, Waverton

This park is the culmination of a long process of transformation from industrial land to foreshore park, which has involved a number of landscape architectural practices, local government and community groups. The final stage of design development to construction, carried out by McGregor + Partners, clearly demonstrates an intelligent and contemporary approach to the reuse and interpretation of an industrial site.One in which the many conflicting demands of residential views, bushland restoration and a post industrial site largely devoid of remnant soils and vegetation, are carefully juggled.

The selection of materials and the simplicity in detailing has been combined with a well choreographed network of spaces and pathways, to give the visitor a rich spatial experience through which the scale and character of the former industrial complex is evoked.

The temptation to over interpret has been resisted whilst the thoughtful insertion of stairs, ramps, balustrades and pathways have clearly articulated the tensions between the former use and the sandstone topography of its location, allowing for a complex reading of the site. Critical junctions between new and old have been resolved in a manner that strengthens the basic premise of the project, one that values the complex debate between naturalism, nostalgia and the need to express a contemporary condition.

Commendation Award in Landscape Architecture

Aspect Sydney P/L
An Eventful Path, Sydney Olympic Parklands

A refreshingly simple and well considered interpretation of commemorative built form, An Eventful Path celebrates and commemorates Australia’s major international cultural and sporting events held at Sydney Olympic Park.

During the day, the installation appears seamlessly integrated into the station forecourt. At night, it turns into a beautiful, glowing line of colours and people are attracted to walk along its length, reading the inscribed plaques as they travel.

The work engages well with the existing site by understanding and acknowledging the complexity of its surrounds and responding with intelligence and restraint. The project explores the idea of monument through alternate means, engaging viewers with a richness of colour and light. Material choice is critical and the combination of glass, stainless steel and the interesting re-use of cast bronze plaques is to be commended.

The design collaboration between Aspect Sydney and Fedeer Associates Graphic Designers is applauded and opportunities for similar collaborations, encouraged.

Commendation Award in Landscape Architecture

Pittendrigh Shinkfield Bruce Pty Ltd
Eden Gardens, Ryde

The Eden Gardens project by PSB Landscape Architects is a saturated experience, which challenges the typology of the generic garden centre. Here the contemporary notion of the collapsed lifestyle, marketing and retail environment is all on show.

The visitor experience is sequenced through the journey of shopping, discovery and active retailing. The entry progression is marked by an underground carpark, which is reminiscent of the parking structure at the National Gallery of Australia, both sliced to allow natural light, ventilation and landscape into this subterranean space. It is a beautiful start to the retail experience, up the ramps to the retail threshold, through to the nursery, cafe, bookshop, galleries and into a series of detailed garden rooms. The reoccurring presence of recycled water in the gardens sets a strong thematic throughout the project and is applauded.

Marked by a succession of strong vignettes, the experience of Eden Gardens is rich and varied. Overall it is a very memorable and pleasurable retailing experience.

Commendation Award in Landscape Architecture

Spackman & Mossop Pty Ltd
Kings Cross Upgrade

The upgrade of Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross marks the completion of the second of the City’s Gateway Projects. It is a complex project competently handled. Significantly it enlarges and fosters the public domain recognising the vibrant and robust character of this neighbourhood without resort to cliché and thematics.

Commended for the calibre of the public art works, although not fully realised, as well as the clear evolution, application and execution of city standard details, the project is significant as a demonstration site for innovative stormwater and street tree planting technologies which were piloted by Ecological Engineering.

Encompassing protection, restoration and contemporary interventions, this urban renewal project elevates utility in an approach which is direct, clear and thoughtful. Spackman & Mossop, in association with Tony Caro Architecture, their consultant team and City Projects are commended.

Commendation Award in Landscape Architecture

Aspect Sydney P/L
Marine Biological Station Park

The new park opens the southern corner of Camp Cove to the public. Constructed edges tension the park at the road and beachside with an easy, sinuous, inner landscape linking entry and destination. Suggestive of the back beach hydrology, the pathway, with its syncopated pavers, traces the evolution of this place in an incidental, episodic way, with a scattered series of memories and contextual clues. Mahoganies, coastal banksias, and remnant coral trees frame the path before the park opens to the beach in a series of broad bleachers, which seem extruded from the concrete base of the headland. The muted palette of materials is simply and confidently handled, giving the park a relaxed beachside feel.

Aspect Sydney together with the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust has produced new parkland that adds to the experience and permeability of our harbour landscape.

More detailed web pages to be uploaded later