Queensland Sites
Kingaroy Cultural Precinct
introduction / overview / slides / location / Qld-Projects
Landscape Architect: John Mongard Landscape Architects
LOCATION: Kingaroy, Queensland.
Listed as A Case Study for the AILA's 2008-2009 National Climate Change Project
OVERVIEW
Innovation
How a roadworks project for a car park can become a vibrant cultural precinct in a town with no money and which had never had a landscape architect provide advice, is a good story. Community design processes enabled the community to redirect funds and energies toward the social and cultural, areas neglected for many years. Council leaders and officers recognised the moment had come to fix a cluster of dysfunctional but key town facilities and to provide new event and activity areas. Locals are proud of their new cultural places and spaces, and thus the main innovation of the project is to facilitate the creation of local cultural and public life.
Clarity and Legibility
The dispersed nature of Kingaroy’s historic and cultural elements required a major land-use rethink. Luckily Council owned land in two locations which enabled the integration of new public spaces and facilities. The precinct comprises a town square, a main street footpath, art gallery, information centre, museum and craft halls focused around an interpretive courtyard. The design creates a contemporary rural character focused around recycled timber, recycled buildings and local craft.
Appropriateness to Function
The public spaces in the cultural precinct are the first improved streetscapes in Kingaroy since the 1970’s. They form a template for better quality walkways with shade, colour and stories. Highly reactive clay soils had damaged prior footpaths so new public spaces utilise long-lasting structural pavements. Farmers with red soil on their boots coupled with a chaotic arrangement of service pits on footpaths generated a paving pattern using red clay pavers in a patchwork pattern reminiscent of local agriculture. A cluster of disused or underused buildings have been relocated and refurbished. JMLA lined the old railways station to form an active edge to one side of the town square (O’Neill Square) and designed the building renovations and repainting. A public toilet and an events stage were incorporated into a square which faces the town’s last remaining historic streetscape. Another old building has been renovated to form a craft and choir activity space in the interpretive courtyard. Recycling extended to using old railway timbers for benches and collecting local rural artefacts to interpret history and culture.
Response to Brief
Briefs tend to change in rural projects and this is generally accepted, since design and planning processes are usually informal. That so many things could come out of such a modest start, is testament to the will of local people to strive to get things that people in the city take for granted: places to celebrate public life and to expand local cultural activities. Rural towns receive poor levels of design input and are subject to an indiscriminate urbanism : this project shows how a regional urbanism can be fashioned over a long term through a collaboration with local people.
Sensitivity to Context
The project provides places for cultural life to happen. Craft groups had nowhere to make things, so now they have a wood working workshop and a hall beside the courtyard. The art gallery was hidden in an upstairs space behind the Council and had no disabled access, so a permanent exhibition gallery has been created with a craft wing and a future contemporary art gallery. Public art and craft has been introduced into the courtyard and footpaths. An interpretive trail helps provide interest along the ‘spine’ emerging between the main street and the precinct. The museum was always shut due to lack of staff and resources. The relocation of the visitor centre centrally allows gallery and museum to share office and administration staffing, thus halving running costs. Visitation has easily tripled in these facilities in the first year. Kingaroy has a wealth of local produce, including excellent wineries; however none of this was sold or displayed in town. The Cultural Precinct now sells local produce, crafts and artworks, and displays crop gardens which allude to the farming district.
Quality of Implementation
All landscape and streetscape works were designed to enable construction by local people using local materials. Furniture and fixtures designed by JMLA focused around robust, practical and simple forms. Council’s parks crew proudly laid pavers, installed interpretive works and built the soft landscape. The quality of construction is excellent. The creation of civic urbanism as opposed to ‘park’ or ‘road’ works is a stepping stone in the evolution of Kingaroy. Design guidelines for footpaths will extend the network.
Sustainable Practices
Convincing rural people about the value of walking around towns rather than driving everywhere is sometimes difficult. The cultural precinct and its interpretive trail is the first step toward a less car dependant town centre. The extensive reuse of materials and old buildings was the highlight of a strategy to minimise waste and to focus on low embodied energy solutions.
Local Ecosystems
Heavy soils and frosts constrained plantings to robust local species able to also survive with minimal water. Liaison with Landcare established shortlists of suitable plants for the town square. The interpretive courtyard utilises edible plants and agricultural plantings.
Environmental Principles
Roadbase and gravel off roads were recycled in landscape works. The lowest embodied energy material for paving was selected (regional clay paving) and local timber and stone feature throughout. Deep gravel sumps are used to harvest stormwater in the town square and the interpretive courtyard. Poor site soils were remediated and mulches created from local gravels and recycled green matter.
Thought Provoking
The project shows how landscape architects can instigate, manage and implement complex projects involving relocated facilities, new buildings and restructured land uses. In rural areas such projects are usually run by architects and focused on buildings. In this project, the way all activities create and reinforce the public realm shows that landscape architecture provides a stronger cultural and ecological framework for cultural and public space precincts.
Fusion of Practice and Theory
The theory behind the project was that a series of linked high quality public spaces accompanied by clustered and relocated buildings and facilities could allow emergent cultural and social patterns and groups to blossom. The implementation of this now evident – the town square provides daily lunchtime refuge, and has become the main venue for civic events and celebrations. The interpretive courtyard forms a public space around which visitors, crafts people and residents can engage. The interpretation tells about ecologies and hidden histories that had not been told before. The visitor and information centre is the new nexus for a broad range of cultural activities which shows that Kingaroy has creative people and who will enliven the town further as time goes by.
The Role and Influence of the Landscape Architect
The landscape architect can easily orchestrate these types of projects and has the values and sensibility to achieve great place making. The influence of the landscape architect throughout this project was primary. Conceptualising buildings and landscapes together and planning building renewal and concepts, before architects are involved, has led to a townscape oriented solution rather than building as object or monument. When great public space making is a primary focus for plans, teams and consultants, it is inevitable that the interests of the whole town and its people will be fostered.
introduction / overview / slides / location / Qld-Projects
2008
