INTRODUCTION
Practice Harris Hobbs Landscapes
Location Yarra Glen and Service Street Curtin ACT
The Woden Flood Victims Memorial commemorates the loss of seven lives on Australia Day, January 26, 1971.
Special Factors
The artwork element is a tall standing stone of Mintaro (South Australian) slate, the finest grain stone to suit the hand-cut lettering technique employed by artist Ian Marr. The tall stone commemorates the seven young people who lost their lives following an intense storm event in the Woden Valley, on the evening of 26 January 1971. A smaller ‘Map’ stone is inscribed with the plan of the suburban development of the Woden Valley at that time.
Budget $58,000.00
Memorial precinct 200m2. Memorial area 16m2
Completed January, 2010
Design Excellence and Functional quality
- The design development phase presented two options to the victims’ families, a formal obelisk style memorial, or a naturalistic memorial. The clear direction from the victims’ families was for a naturalistic memorial. The resulting memorial is a clear and legible expression of the design concept, and fully meets the brief.
- The memorial is an appropriate response to a tragic event, and is socially, culturally, historically and physically bound to the natural setting.
Landscape Principles
The memorial responds to three Landscape Principles: It Values the existing landscape; Protects> Enhances> and Regenerates, and Intervenes with respect for the present.
The memorial represents a past natural disaster, but may foretell future disasters. The Causeway flooded due to acknowledged inadequate design. The memorial serves as a harbinger of future natural events, and behoves designers to ensure that they consider future potential climate change in physical infrastructure.
The memorial is relevant to the profession in formative, forward-looking and thought-provoking ways through its reference to a natural disaster, exacerbated by inadequate design.
It serves as a warning to design professions that our actions (or omissions) in response to climate change may have tragic repercussions.
introduction / overview / location / presentation / Projects
2010
