New South Wales Projects & Sites
Railway Park, Auburn
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Landscape Architects: Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture and Mcgregor Westlake Architecture
Location: Auburn Town Centre, Sydney, New South Wales
Introduction
Railway Park is a local urban park in Auburn Town Centre – part of the fabric of the everyday public domain. Local parks of this character make up the greater number in the quantum of parks in the urban environment – these are the spaces most experienced in the everyday life of the city. They are not so much destinational spaces, as the places that we walk to, perhaps on the way to somewhere else, and that, in increasingly dense urban environments, are an adjunct to the private open spaces of residential living.
As such, they have to work in many ways to meet community expectations and to fit within the management regimes of the authority vested with their care and upkeep. They are often low profile spaces, with low capital commitments and even lower maintenance budgets.
The upgrade of Railway Park in Auburn grew from the Integrated Public Art and Design Framework produced in 2004 for Auburn Town Centre . – In close consultation with Council’s urban design team, our Integrated Art and Design Framework, produced with McGregor Westlake looked at how to create new public space, and how to make existing space work better. It also proposed a conceptual and spatial framework for the structure of the town centre and the design of individual spaces in the public domain. Design development of Railway Park tests the strategic and thematic basis of the earlier plan.
Railway Park was a busy urban park providing connection to the station, with demands for children’s play, community rooms, tai chi, social interaction and resting. It was run down, dowdy and not accommodating any of its demands well. The entrance to the station, in particular, was dangerous and inconvenient –entering from Rawson Street lights to the station involved crossing through a bus/service vehicle lay by. The Park is an important piece of public domain, providing the only readily accessible open space in a town centre which has a high density and higher than average socio economic needs. The public domain supplements crowded living conditions with little or no private open space.
Design collaboration with Peter McGregor, was a testing place for the ideas developed in the Framework study – mainly that of using the attributes of the place to create an artful park design. The structure of the park is built around the strength of the existing railway edge – a robust brick wall, and the falling topography that allowed the park space to be folded into different territories to accommodate the different uses. It is a hybrid space, part little square that makes a safer and more generous connection to the station, and part traditional green open space with trees.
The low budget demanded innovative solutions. Materials were reused where possible – the majority of paving is directly reused from the existing park, but turned on its side – street edge walls were kept in place and repaired, seats cleaned up, repaired, resurfaced and reinstalled. Recycled bricks from off site supplemented pavements where necessary.
Railway Park provides new opportunities for Auburn, accommodating the everyday needs of the community. It has a strong identity, and a good fit with the place – it is robust and enduring, while also engaging and delightful.
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
2011
