Victorian Projects and Sites
Geelong Youth Activities Area
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Landscape Architect: Convic Design P/L
Project Location: Geelong Waterfront, Victoria
The Geelong Youth Activities Area (GYAA) is a public multipurpose youth focused intergenerational recreation plaza opposite Deakin University on the main waterfront in the heart of Geelong’s CBD.
The Geelong Youth Activities Area was first considered in mid 2001. As a reaction to skaters and other young people using the recently implemented waterfront development, Council looked at providing a separate purpose built area that was designed specifically for young people’s recreation.
Initially our brief was to design a small skate space, however over the following 7 years, with Convic Designs guidance Council embraced the need for a much larger and more flexible urban space to cater for a far greater range of young people.
The end result is Australia’s first centralized public ‘Youth Activities Area’. An exciting, visually dynamic & contemporary urban plaza that provides a hub of activity for Geelong’s young people and broader community.
The Geelong YAA is an integrated youth inclusive, public recreation space. In Australia and internationally the GYAA has set the new world benchmark for providing accessible, public and diverse sporting, recreational and social opportunities for young people in the heart of a city’s CBD.
This progressive approach to social sustainability recognizes the importance of providing for young people in areas other than structured sport and education. The GYAA is a great example of creating a central, accessible public plaza which provides a range of both active, passive and social pursuits for all ages and which can be activated and adaptable over time to meet evolving interests and needs of young people.
Special Factors
This is the first centralized public Youth Activities Plaza in Australia.
The GYAA is evolutionary; it will evolve with changing interests, needs and trends and will be relevant for future generations of young people.
The GYAA includes communication technologies and provides unique opportunities for interactive art and expression in a public recreation space; including projection, audio and media.
It is an events space that is regularly activated with over 5000 people having attended organized events at the GYAA in the first 5 months of operation. The GYAA provides opportunities for a diverse range of interest groups to socialize, display artwork, participate in active sport, spaces for outdoor classes, performance and much more.
This iconic, bold and durable public space is a key component linking the City Center to Deakin University and the Corio Bay waterfront fitting comfortably alongside an existing playground and leading directly to Cunningham Pier, the Carousel and Steampacket Place. Importantly the design relates to its cultural and historical context and encourages the whole community, as they move through to the wider waterfront, to participate and value young people and the GYAA.
Design excellence and functional quality:
The GYAA is set up to cater for a multitude of events, art and performance opportunities including concerts, markets, school drama, circus oz & exhibition of local artists. To accommodate this, the GYAA plaza has been designed as a large cascading terrace that reinterprets traditional ideas of amphitheaters and performance. In addition to a central performance stage there are a myriad of smaller spaces encouraging social groups and classes to consider how they use the space; finding exciting, intimate and dramatic spaces as they need.
Sculptural mild steel frames provide shelter, event gantries and signage and house projectors, media screens, IPOD jacks and art display opportunities.
The plaza is built of a bold mix of concrete, steel and stone. This reflects the marine context in which it is placed, creates a visually dramatic and striking statement and also ensures its long term durability, catering for over 200 young people a day actively using the space in a exposed coastal environment.
At night, the space comes alive with bright white theatre lights and gobo art projections. Vibrant red LED strip lights which capture & reinforce the intensity and energy of this sculptural terraced space.
The GYAA is integrated seamlessly with an adjacent play space within the surrounding context of Corio Bay waterfront, Cunningham Pier and the established festival space at Steam Packer Quay. Not only does the GYAA provide a vital connection between the city center and waterfront, this is a significant commitment to the young people of Geelong providing a directly accessible social and recreation space.
As the terraces wrap around each other they create a multitude of skateable moments, a mix of defendable seating and social spaces, a main events stage with several other creative and more intimate performance spaces, an unconventional and spectacular half court basketball court and central lawn viewing area. These ‘arms’ rise from the ground in key locations to form multi-purpose sculptural steel gantries which accommodate the Basketball ring, multimedia projectors, art boxes, signage and feature lighting.
The whole agenda behind the planning and configuration of the GYAA and essentially Convic Designs approach to any public space is to reach a far broader range of users. GYAA encourages participation by all age groups including young people who traditionally shy away from active sport and performance. We are acutely aware of the needs of young females. Through the planning of the GYAA and by including so many moments for socializing, grassed and seating areas central to the space, we provide an entry point to access and participate in skateboarding and other unstructured active sports. This ensures a much more sustainable inclusive teenage focused future.
Addressing the Australian Landscape Principles:
VALUE OUR LANDSCAPE - approaches and strategies
Council can hold its head up and say we have looked at young people’s needs and we have taken the bold step of creating the most amazing recreation and events plaza in the heart of their city and treasured waterfront. It would have been easy to justify that this land was too valuable for young people however, quite the contrary, they believe it was too valuable to not be for young people.
Convic Design challenge traditional site selection methodologies and rather than apply recreation models for facility siting where ‘like’ sporting infrastructure is placed in public reserves and parks, Convic apply a ‘social’ model and look at where young people want to be and how the space in which they inhabit can be more engaging and be truly youth inclusive public space.
Convic have recognized the need to review planning approaches and site selection criteria for ‘youth spaces’. The prominence and value of central sites demands and deserves a greater commitment to design resolution than is typical of isolated sports facilities. It is through amenity, mobility and adult availability that we affect access to opportunity for teenagers. Amenity and social infrastructure impacts significantly on teenagers and determines, in part, what they do when they are not at school and the extent to which they engage with their family and community. [Kids live in adult spaces and time: how home, community, school and adult work affected opportunity for teenagers in suburban Australia 2008/9 Williams, Pocock & Bridge]
The Geelong YYA has also been designed to be fully DDA compliant to enable wheelchair access throughout the various terraced spaces.
PROTECT ENHANCE REGENERATE AND DESIGN FOR THE FUTURE - environmental, socio-cultural and economic responsibility and sustainability
Social Sustainability
Convic Designs commitment to social sustainability is evidenced in the GYAA. The GYAA is fundamentally about inclusivity and creative approaches to building resilience in our communities. Unlike so many skate parks which really only cater for traditional sports in isolation, this urban space is for everyone. It’s a space designed for all young people; for young women, for musicians, for artists! A stage and events space provides opportunities for performance, dance and exhibition. Art frames and media projectors create a conduit for displaying art with a youth focus.
It is a space designed to ensure Council can reach as many different users as possible by activating the space in many different ways. There are elements design for sport as well as a multitude of areas for social gathering and interaction.
This project represents a substantial shift from traditional planning approaches which typically isolate out recreation facilities for the various disparate groups within the community. The GYAA demonstrates Convic Designs approach to forging intergenerational social networks, where young people engage with adults and older people within their community, providing opportunities outside the home, vocational experience may be acquired, educational horizons may be widened and appropriate levels of independence may be fostered. [Kids live in adult spaces and time: how home, community, school and adult work affected opportunity for teenagers in suburban Australia 2008/9 Williams, Pocock & Bridge]
By truly understanding young people, and genuinely providing for their needs; providing socially rich experiences in public space and respecting their point of view, using our skills as designers we can secure prominent sites in the heart of the city, we are ensuring access to social, vocational and educational opportunity for young people and ultimately investing in our future.
Environmental Sustainability
Our approach to environmental sustainably generally, and in particular the GYAA, is a commitment to using robust materials - steel and concrete - in their raw form, favoring technical resolution and collaboration with exceptionally skilled fabricators and trade people rather than a less sustainable reliance on ornate proprietary items or indulgent and expensive finishes. We believe young people relate to ‘rawness’ and also believe that through skillful detailing and well resolved but rudimentary fabrication methods we can reduce the demand for high energy manufacturing and elaborate distribution process.
The GYAA terraces feed directly into adjacent sedimentation swales which also filter the run-off from the adjacent carpark before discharging into Corio Bay.
EMBRACE RESPONSIVE DESIGN – innovative, adaptable and responsive design
As designers we create physical spaces that are generally anchored to the time of their construction however ‘adolescence’ is of no one time, rather it’s a period in everyone’s life.
What is trendy now seems to always be ‘daggy’ to those that follow. That is the challenge of a designed youth space; to be able to create a physical outcome that can be adaptable and flexible to changing needs. To be evolutionary and ensure cross generational ownership and usage over time and therefore function both as a park of today and a park of the future. Convic Design has applied a number of strategies to achieve this and this is evidenced at Geelong with the diversity of activation and media projection offset with simple bold material selection and physical form.
The GYAA is for current and future generations of young people. It is adaptable and accommodates changing needs. Sculptural steel structures and resilient concrete pavements, the space is designed to be durable in the corrosive maritime location and is a youth hub for the foreseeable long term future.
IPOD jacks and WAP technology provide further opportunities for young people to use the space for music and accessing the internet. Importantly these technologies allow the space to evolve, encouraging contributions by each subsequent generation.
Relevance to the profession of landscape architecture, the public and the education of future practitioners:
There was no standard or precedent example of what a ‘youth space’ is. Council and Convic Design have taken a leap of faith and become leaders in developing the first central youth plaza of its kind in Australia if not the world.
We hope that this will set the new benchmark for communities around Australia who will look at empowering and supporting their younger generations with safe, exciting and engaging public spaces for teenagers to enjoy and show case their talents to the rest of society and hopefully go a long way in breaking down negative perceptions within our community of what is that young people do and instead value their contribution to a vibrant, progressive city.
Through the GYAA and other unstructured social, play and sports opportunities in public space Convic Design have demonstrated a revitalized approach to planning and design of any community space, providing not just for interest groups in isolation but encouraging participation and building intergenerational social networks across the whole community.
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
2010
