artilce published Landscape Australia no 22 (3- 2000)
Public Domain Strategy
by Catherin Bull
Design Review Panel Member
Whether the public domain strategy achieved its purpose of elevating the public domain, and at the role of the Olympic Co-ordination Authority and the Government Architects Design Directorate - have they have been able to fulfil their roles?
The Public Domain Strategy performed a powerful and necessary role in the development of the Homebush Olympics site-it presented a series of brilliantly simple concepts around which diverse groups with diverse interests could focus their attention, debates and actions. This was its strength. The various 'moves' (green/blue/red) drove the Strategy and were at once poetic and practical concepts presented in a positive light. Given the advanced stage of some of the work on site at the time the Public Domain Strategy started, it would have been easy for the designers to concentrate on the remedial.
Instead, they framed the moves positively, avoiding fault finding and finger pointing. This tactic enabled the many parties to move on, without having to confront overt blame' for some of the obviously unwise decisions about how individual components should relate to the overall site and the public domain.
Once in place, the Strategy drove more than a separate agenda for the creation of a public domain with an identified character and range of works. It also provided the basis for all of the development control work by the OCA (Olympic Co-ordination Authority) that was necessary to protect the public domain from further erosive demands from the individual developments that abut it.
These developments include very powerful and substantial facilities, often encumbered by enormous commercial and technical risks. They demand space, visibility and attention and their lessees and operators are willing to fight to achieve what they consider is necessary for their survival, even pre-eminence.
While this is a typical public/private domain tussle, at the Homebush site, it is one played out on what is a public site, to he developed in loco in the public interest, rather than the more typical situation where the tussle is between public and private sites.
The work of promoting the quality of the public domain and of controlling the negative impacts from adjacent development fell to the Urban Design Group and GADD (Government Architect Design Directorate) at the OCA (led by Bridget Smyth), and to its group of appointed experts-the Design Review Panel (Chaired by the Government Architect, Chris Johnson, and regularly attended by the Director of the OCA, David Richmond).
While this system of diretion and review appeared clumsy and, perhaps, even unnecessary to design teams on individual projects, it helped ensure that the 'big picture' was kept in focus amongst the maze of day-to-day decisions that were often made under extreme pressure from budgets and construction programs. It was a system that was made to fit the circumstances, perhaps even a 'retro-fit', rather than one that one would have started with if there had been the time and recognition of the scope of the problem initially
In considering the success or otherwise of the Public Domain Strategy and the resulting processes and products on the ground, the questions that arise are, whether what exists on the ground is a quality product and whether the processes that achieved it were quality processes.
The conclusion must be that both could be or have been better, but in the circumstances of the site and the event, with all its technical and political challenges, what is there is exciting, vigorous and worth being proud of. The public domain has a strong, identifiable character that, with care over ensuing years, should survive and develop.
Without the Strategy and what came out of it, there can be no doubt that the overall site would be weaker both in the quality of its component facilities and the connecting matrix, the Public Domain. The expertise brought by Hargreaves Associates (who, as outsiders, were able to think afresh about the Public Domain and the process required to improve it), the GADD/OCA team and the Design Review Panel, did change entrenched views and redefine directions.
Could the ultimate quality of both have been better?
There is no doubt in my mind that they could and should have been. The problems that arose, as a result of early unco-ordinated decision-making about individual sites, of lack of a robust overall plan and of responding to the demands of individual interests before having defined a clear and realistic strategy for the overall site, are all absolutely predictable. They are typical of large urban design projects anywhere.
One has to wonder why that was not recognised sooner and a strategy put in place earlier to keep the process under better control. What we have is great; but let's recognise that, with better processes in place earlier, it could have been even better. We can learn something about how to get that 'better' by taking a long, hard, honest look at what is there and how it was achieved. By learning from the whole experience of the Olympics, both its successes and its failures, urban design and the public domain in Australia really can look forward to a better future.
Dr Catherin Bull holds the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair in Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne, heading up programs in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Catherin has a Masters from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Design from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. Catherin researches the relationship between theory and practice in Australian landscape architecture and urban design, especially the role of the urban landscape. She reviews design entries for competitions and awards programs-work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.
