Queensland Projects and Sites
Caral Ecovillage
introduction / images / location / Qld-Projects
Landscape Architect: John Mongard Landscape Architects
LOCATION:Defunct Canefields in Toogoom Village, Hervey Bay, Queensland
Listed as A Case Study for the AILA's 2008-2009 National Climate Change Project
Introduction
Site: Defunct Canefields in Toogoom Village, Hervey Bay, Queensland
Client: Gung-Ho Enterprises
Project: A self-sustaining ecovillage for 180 homes, featuring a mixed use and walkable village centre and productive community gardens in each ecohamlet.
The Process: Collaborative design with community from visioning to maintenance stages.
Collaborators: John Mongard Landscape Architects leading a team including KBR, Automatic, HRP (Gold Coast)
Budget: Target is to provide sustainable living at the same price as suburban sprawl options nearby.
Stage: Environmental Planning for Development Approval
Not Just Tinkering On The Edges
The fundamental structure of new places for living and working needs reinvention. The environmental resources of water, waste, energy and landscape must become structure, not add on features. To live in a more sociable future, we need to change the process of subdivision in to a placemaking process which involves people in the visioning, design, construction and caring stages of growth.
None of theses things currently drive the subdivision process, and we as design participants, are left to green up the mistakes and to take the flood prone 10% and try to make somewhere to go for residents.
Its time we forged ahead and invented a new process and new outcomes, because landscape architects have the skills and opportunity to lead the community toward sustainability. It is time we take a leadership role in the ‘subdivision’ process, since surveyors and town planners have not been able to deliver either a process or an outcome which moves anywhere near a truly environmental ‘closed-loop’ form of development. We need to move much further and much quicker if we are to meet appropriate waste, water and energy targets for the new millennium.
Hervey Bay is one of the fastest growing regions outside the capital cities, buoyed by the migration to the sun coast of the elderly, and by the sea-change affecting peoples desire to live with more amenity.
Places like Hervey Bay however, do not have the level of planning, design and development sophistication available in the cities and suffer from some of the worst forms of suburban sprawl and housing: very low levels of quality and sustainability in housing and sub division.
Caral Eco Village is a significant sea-change in the city’s pattern of growth. When community workshops began on the defunct cane-fields to determine how to build a self-sustaining ‘closed cycle’ living place, the biggest learning circle was to convince and educate councillors that it was real and that it was going to happen in Hervey Bay.
After over 300 residents of the bushland village of Toogoom collaborated on the design and layout of the eco-village, it became obvious that people identified with the urgent need for an alternative to suburban sprawl and unsustainable housing, and the community embraced the proposal, with only one objection received during the approval process.
The community envisaged a traditional country village centre, but with very high levels of sustainable infrastructure. Residents wanted a community hub for the whole of the bushland village of Toogoom, and a range of living options which were not being currently provided in the city within a walkable distance to the hub. The layout which emerged mixes housing options from shop-top studio density through to rural residential density beside the creeks, all mixed together, with the greater density towards the hub. All development will be within a closed environmental loop: generating all of its own water, power and wastewater recycling.
Placemaking Begins with the Landscape
Caral Ecovillage was designed and led by landscape architects, supported by environmental engineers, a local botanist, an architect and town planners. No surveyors have been required to participate in the lot layout. The landscape has led the layout process, with placemaking occurring around wallum and paperbark creek ways and all trees being retained on site. 70% of the site is being retained and rehabilitated as communal land and public parkland. A propagation nursery will be established and be a centre for the local landcare and bushcare groups who are revegetating the creekways. The coastal vine forest patches will be connected together to form continuous wildlife corridors. The form and structure of the land and its topsoil is being retained, with minimal earthworks and the sandy soil being compacted on site to form road base.
Only defunct canefields will become developable land. The existing rural roads become a framework for a village main street, thus encouraging the Ecovillage to engage and look outward to the Toogoom community. The village centre thus occurs on the local route into the remainder of the Toogoom village, providing a convenient centre for a community currently reliant on driving five to ten kilometres to the nearest shops and community centre.
Local Sustainability is the Test
The old fishing shacks and timber beach bungalows in Toogoom were ironically the best examples of sustainable housing in the whole of Hervey Bay. Lightweight, easily expandable homes with broad decks and thin footprints become the inspiration for Caral’s placemaking.
Six different home footprints were designed by the landscape architect and the architect, to accommodate all densities from a rural residential home surrounded by bushland and creekways, shop top studio living for home/ work options, and duplex / courtyard ‘hervey deco’ homes on less than 400m2 for single and elderly people close to facilities. Timber and tin kit homes are being investigated as a means of offering affordable options and to prevent architectural gentrification.
To minimise environmental footprints, garages and homes on each site have a building envelope. Most garages are on the boundary and are duplex style to reduce streetscape dominance and limit hardstand driveways. Each building envelope has been individually designed from landscape and amenity principles: provide north / south orientation, a private courtyard space, no fencing to the rear to provide an active face to community gardens and enough side width for proper screening and for boats and tinnies which are the love of the locals. The lot boundaries were thus set around a connected building, landscape and garage envelope, and a detailed design review panel will ensure the environmental and energy requirements are fulfilled.
Raising the Environmental Bar
The community title structure allows a much higher level of environmental targets to be achieved than the conventional suburban subdivision codes favoured by local authorities.
No kerb and channel and minimal width rural lanes with vegetated swales will recycle water to ponds in community gardens. Along with the village green, other parkland and building rooves, all site water will be caught, cleaned and use for drinking. No offsite water connection will be required, and no bores will be dug. The need to achieve a balance of water onsite has been the major determinant of the layout of Caral, promoting stormwater from being an output, to being the sites key asset.
The recycling of all waste water for irrigation, community gardens and food growing areas is fundamental to achieving sufficient onsite water. To achieve sufficient storage and quantity for a whole community, a common water treatment and storage centre will be created. No connection to Council sewerage systems will be required.
Solar and wind energy systems will become primary generators of communal power. A solar array will be built, allowing for the efficient collection of energy. The excess will be sold to the grid and will pay the community managers wage. High energy requirements for appliances, combined with low energy home design will reduce the power demands from the home. A cableless fast stream digital network will be built using a transmitter, allowing efficient work from home opportunities and community ‘noticeboard’ networking. A unique shared services channel has been designed which allows future proofing of services through easy access.
Who Will Champion Sustainable Design?
The technologies of the new living places are fast expanding and need embracing. They are the exciting element offering a way to sustainability, but requiring designers to make places around the infrastructure. Landscape architects can be the catalyst to lead community and developers toward much better models for the future. The new infrastructure needs design frameworks which the engineers and surveyors are clearly unable to grasp. In taking this leap, the landscape architect will find a central role and relevance to shaping the sustainable places of the future.
Places like Caral can become ecological beacons in the heartland of unstainable growth areas like Hervey Bay, giving us better options for work, live and play. For our practise, Caral Ecovillage represents the point at which we have reached the confidence and skill to be able to lead and manage the whole subdivision and placemaking process.
introduction / location / Qld-Projects
2008
