New South Wales Sites
Barcom Park
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
Landscape Architect: Sue Barnsley Design
Location: Barcom Park, Darlinghurst, Sydney NSW
the junction of Barcom Ave, West St and Boundary St, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Introduction
The remaking of Barcom Park has come from the closure of two bounding roads, effectively doubling the size of this pocket park. Whilst improving local traffic movement, servicing and emergency access from the hospital, the new park draws light, soft lawns, seats and gathering spaces into a new and engaging composition.
Ten metre road reservations have contracted to a four metre path along West Street and a share way on Barcom Avenue, where pixelated islands of bamboo, veil the shaded hospital perimeter. A diagonal path cuts through the broad and gently falling grass topography to connect these new, dedicated walkways.
Cupped either side of this stone path within the embrace and swelling of the grass, are two small curved seating pods, set at the quiet epicentre of the park. Each pod is formed by two bench seats of different radii, which draw the curve of the hospital into the composition and language of the park. Curved like apostrophes, the benches create a flow and dialogue between the pods that makes for conversation. At night these glowing rings brighten the interior of the park.
Crossing the base of the park a warping concrete wall and boardwalk edge a tangle of rushes and bracken that treat runoff captured across this steep site. Both retaining wall and seating bench, the wall folds from end, to centre, to end: from sloping revetment, to vertical wall, to cantilever. Where the wall projects into the share way it is clad in bead blasted stainless steel as both protection and adornment. Here a constellation of small, white led lights set in the boardwalk illuminates the underside of the wall. By day, this shadowed edge catches light reflected from the face of these lights onto the concrete, patterning the wall like water under a cliff.
Formed below the boardwalk the reed bed and bio purification basin is the most obvious expression of a series of water management initiatives within the park, which combine with gross pollutant traps, permeable pavements and swales to allow infiltration and return of low waterflows to the aquifer whilst treating stormwater particulates before discharge to Rushcutter’s Bay. On the other side of the hydrological cycle, irrigation of the park has been made possible through a public private partnership between the City of Sydney and St Vincent’s and Mater Health, allowing the capture and transfer of stormwater from the hospital to a subterranean retention tank within the new park.
In such a densely populated inner city area with limited open space it is vital that every opportunity is taken to make parks effective, resilient and playful. Barcom Park demonstrates that small, considered interventions together with strategic alliances can transform both place and neighbourhood.
timing: 2004 – 2007
project cost: $ 1,500,000/ $ 400 per square metre
client : City of Sydney - Chris Thomas, Stephen Merchant, Gynt Drinan, Russell Kosko
design team: TLB Engineers, Andrew Sutton, djcoalition lighting consultants & Northrop Engineers, David Skelley & Barry Lywood, Hydro-Plan Irrigation & Water Resource Consultants, Tony Spinks
city consultants : LHO Group Hydraulic Fire & Civil Engineers, MBM Quantity Surveyors & Cost Consultants
contractor: Regal Innovation - Robert Stanton, Graeme French, Trevor Ohlrich
photography: Eric Sierens, Ian Hobbs, Brett Boardman
awards: Water Sensitive Urban Design in the Sydney Region, NSW Sustainable Water Challenge 2006: Highly Commended Retrofit Category
masterplan: 2002 South Sydney Council
introduction / overview / images / location / Projects
2008
