AILA projects

Queensland Projects and Sites

Brisbane Foreshore Parklands

introduction / overview / images  /  location /  Qld-Projects

Landscape Architect: City Design, Brisbane City Council

Location: Wynnum / Manly & Sandgate/ Shorncliffe. Brisbane, Queensland

Overview:

In 2004/5, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman committed a budget of $24 million for the renewal of public spaces on the city’s foreshores.

Given the scale of the project, 2 precincts were identified - the northern foreshores (Sandgate and Shorncliffe) and the eastern foreshores (Wynnum and Manly) – and within these discrete project sites were targeted for staged implementation. Following a feasibility study, masterplanning developed the Foreshore Parklands Concept that informed the design and documentation of each project site. Construction commenced in 2006 and the final site was completed in mid 2008.

In the northern precinct, the centre piece is Moora Park at Shorncliffe. This park, with its pier, sandy beach and cottonwood shaded picnic settings has long been a destination for “Brisbanites” wanting to visit the seaside. Given the layers of use and history, the design required careful treatment to make the interventions necessary to meet the project’s objectives for increased capacity and robustness, freshness and comfort.

A plaza of urban scale and detailing links the entry to the pier and the picnic and recreation areas. The promenade path provides generous space for shared use; the shelters and amenities connect with the site and historic suburb through their architecture and complimentary planting; art subtly reveals cultural associations on the pavements or more overtly in the plaza and through the themed regional playground in “the forest at the edge of the sea”.

Further north, Lovers Walk and Flinders Parade continue the linear foreshore parkland that helps define historic Sandgate. While more modest than Moora Park, these revitalised parks also express the project’s language of landscape, architecture and art to offer settings and facilities for socialising, picnicking, viewing and promenading.

Moving south across the Brisbane River, the project recommences in the Eastern Precinct at Wynnum Central with Breakwater Park and Wynnum Wading Pool and pier. The promenade along the water’s edge offers opportunities to connect with the inter-suburban shared path and also to sit and view the Bay, picnic, play and wet a line.

The historic wading pool has been respectfully re-engineered and renewed, with innovative treatment technology allowing swimming in clean, chemical free, tidal water. The historic role of the wading pool in Wynnum’s sense of place is long established. The project has reinvigorated that somewhat faded role through the juxtaposition of promenade and plaza, artwork, architecture and landscape and created a place that is once again worthy as Wynnum’s seaside civic space.

At Manly, the project delivered Bayside Park where there is an exciting and almost seamless meeting of sandy beach, public park, community and maritime facilities and suburban town centre. The expressive design of the park, playground and architectural elements offer a contemporary seaside setting for small and large scale community, recreation and cultural events.

Special Factors:

The length of the foreshore parklands totals 12 kilometres and the width ranges from two metres to a hundred and fifty.

During the 1930’s Depression, relief workers engaged on construction projects of civic improvement and beautification along the Esplanades. In Wynnum, this work included reclamation of two hectares of mudflats, formation of 610 metres of stone revetment wall and the creation of the Wading Pool (1933).

The foreshores experience king tides, storm surges and salt spray. Salt accumulation in the soil had resulted in poor performance of park vegetation. The design uses a series of landscape walls to control approximately 70% of the predicted inundation.

Plants (over 60,000) used in the upgrade are salt tolerant, endemic natives. Swales direct site run off and roof water to flush salt from planting areas.

At Manly, a 75-metre long shelter has been created to provide a large, highly flexible covered area which can be used by a large number of small groups or a very large group.

Budget: Total project budget was $24 million

The project brief was informed by a process of consultation with communities of interest. Objectives contained in the project brief included:

develop a clear planning and design intent that was able to be expressed across different sites and stages of development

optimise the site specific recreation and amenity potential

identify the physical and cultural qualities of each of the foreshores and facilitate their protection and where appropriate, their amplification

establish a framework for sustainability that runs through from planning and design into implementation, utilisation and management.

The vision established for the Foreshores Parklands Project was for a linked series of interventions and settings that respond to the constraints and realise the opportunities of the natural, cultural and built environments and urban context of Brisbane’s foreshore landscape. This is expressed through the creation of a linear network of public, outdoor spaces that promote subtropical living and recreation, reveal scenic views to Moreton Bay, invite cultural interpretation and facilitate new and ongoing community events and festivals.

Seven themes were developed early by the project team to guide and permeate the planning, consultation, design and delivery:

Community - Engage and strengthen the community. Be responsive to their needs and aspirations. Encourage ownership through community involvement in planning, design, management and performance monitoring of park facilities and use.

Environment and Sustainability - Develop and demonstrate sustainable outcomes explicitly and implicitly. Retain, rehabilitate and reveal the natural environment ensuring biodiversity and other ecological services along with opportunities for appreciation and learning by the community. Provide for social outcomes and economic benefits.

Site Context & Functionality – Look beyond the individual sites to appreciate and respond to the urban context so as to provide a wide range of social, recreational and cultural opportunities. Build in variety, flexibility and longevity.

Landscape Character - Define “sense of place” by providing a contextually framed hierarchy of quality, comfort and meaning in spaces and experiences. Respond to the diversity of the city’s demographic with a diversity of spaces and experiences.

Accessibility - Provide convenient, safe, equitable and legible access throughout the foreshore’s public spaces. Establish urban linkages to public and active transport nodes, commercial centres, local recreation facilities and reserves.

Recreation - Design for a varied, accessible and balanced range of recreational opportunities and provide facilities and infrastructure to support these, while building in capacity for yet to-be determined uses.

Cultural Heritage - Protect, enhance and promote the heritage of the foreshores through cultural literacy. Support appreciation and learning opportunities for visitors through recognition, interpretation and celebration.

In addition to the requirement of the brief to optimise recreation and amenity potential, the project team identified that the Parklands could create an urban-scale edge that delivers both broad scale and local outcomes. In pursuing these aims, there was a commitment to protect and enhance natural, visual, cultural and built qualities and values.

Community and social drivers and outcomes were important. Through the provision of quality, accessible, public spaces and pathways that facilitate walking and playing, meeting and celebrating, the project will contribute to the Living in Brisbane 2026 outcomes of an Active and Healthy City and a Friendly and Safe City.

Integration of elements and facilities through the design has provided socially cohesive settings. Playgrounds are carefully integrated with spaces and facilities for family and group gathering and picnicking; likewise paths are integrated with plazas and other gathering spaces to enable celebration, promenading, safety and surveillance. Artwork is integrated into the spaces to stimulate, amuse and inform.

As an easily accessed network of socially engaging, stimulating and attractive public spaces, the Foreshore Parklands contribute to healthy, positive and vibrant communities for Brisbane. They offer opportunities for people to exercise, meet, interact and connect. Connection is vital for individual and community well being – it’s what public space can do best! As well as the social benefits, these spaces along the water’s edge also enable connection with the beauty and power, certainty and temporality of nature.

The project’s design interventions have created enhanced settings for historic built elements such as the Sandgate Methodist Church, Shorncliffe Pier and Wynnum Wading Pool. Integral to this have been artworks that both frame and inform.

The coastal architecture, endemic plant palette, interpretative signage and artworks (such as seaside stories in the pavement) provide renewed connections between public and place, past and present.

AILA Landscape Principles

Value our Landscape: The overall size and context of the foreshores and the community who call this area home extends far beyond the ‘esplanade’ which has been redeveloped as part of this project. The initial project research included feasibility study, site analysis and master planning which addressed issues of connection to local town centres, transport nodes and key pedestrian / cycle links. Community engagement and input occurred through the key stages of the project.

Protect > Enhance > Regenerate: Innovative design solutions were achieved in response to the challenges of the sites, including:

Wynnum Wading Pool – chemical free treatment system using sea water; heritage responsive construction of a new concrete shell to preserve / entomb the original fabric

Moora Park – WSUD incorporation through stormwater harvesting and polishing that in turn flushes salt from planting areas

Bayside Park - a 75 metre long shelter that forms a spine for the activities and urban design of the parkland

Promenade – low glare lighting for night time activity was designed to avoid impacting of highly territorial views from adjacent streets and properties.

Design with Respect:   Given the location of the project, exposure to coastal conditions is extreme and the potential future impacts from climate change needed to be considered. Site planning, grading design and material selection of paths, seating and hob walls, activity areas and planting zones took into account potential effects of sea level rise and increasing storm events and aimed to minimise impacts from such events.

Design for the Future: At an urban scale the foreshores offer quality and high capacity recreational opportunities easily accessed by local public and active transport modes. The high level of community engagement throughout the project has provided a city asset which is owned and respected by its community.

Embrace Responsive Design: The physical environment and high usage of the foreshores is extremely demanding on materials. The need for a simple, robust and aesthetic palette of materials saw concrete, timber and steel selected. Robust furniture, including concrete seating walls has been used not only to provide amenity for users but also to define spaces and function as low retaining walls and barriers to protect the parkland from wave action and existing trees from foot traffic compaction.

A sustainability framework was developed at the master plan stage of the project. Initiatives implemented included:

water sensitive urban design (including the collection / harvesting of stormwater for use in toilets)

passive watering of trees through collection and polishing of site and carpark run-off

vegetation rehabilitation along with extensive new planting (60,000) for biodiversity purposes and shade to paved areas

specific techniques to buffer and protect existing and new vegetation from the impact of strong winds

incorporation of endemic coastal plants

organic conditioning and re-use of site soils

selection of materials best suited for their whole of life costing in a coastal and high use public environment

use of low energy, low maintenance fittings in lighting of amenities, shelters and paths.

The project has demonstrated how an urban design approach can not just improve, but revitalise and transform tired and run down areas. Earlier efforts on Brisbane’s foreshores had taken a narrow focussed, site by site view of the problems and opportunities. By comparison the current project lifted the view from that of disparate parks that need “freshening up” to a vision of an urban scaled network of public spaces that frame, activate and engage the city’s edge along Moreton Bay.

The rigour of developing and applying an ambitious vision and concept ensured that project has delivered aesthetic outcomes for the built and natural landscapes that fundamentally benefit the city’s social, environmental and economic outcomes and values.

Significantly the project took shape and was delivered through an interdisciplinary urban design approach that integrated the processes and expertise of many disciplines. City Design’s landscape architectural led project team and used a collaborative and multi-disciplinary design process that extended to include the Council’s strategic program areas and local asset operation / maintenance arms. Along this journey of delivery, community engagement and consultation was actively pursued. As project design manager, the Landscape Architect commissioned services in: Architecture, Public Art, Building Services, Sustainable Solutions, Environmental Management, Road Design, Pavement Design, Structural Design and Survey.

introduction / overview / images  /  location /  Qld-Projects

2010