NATIONAL AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Recipient: Taylor Cullity Lethlean with Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Robert Owen
Project: Craigieburn Bypass
Client: Vic Roads
The Craigieburn Bypass is a sophisticated transit project which integrates art, landscape and infrastructure. The project is not a problem solving based solution but a creative response to concepts of movement, arrival and reference.
The design was borne out the need to reroute the Hume Highway and the obvious tension in the selected bypass route between the basalt plain grasslands on the west and the city’s expanding urban fringe on the east.
Without resorting to the creation of a gateway as an object, the project sequences elements in a sculptural, almost theatrical way to reveal the city.
The careful integration of sculpture, landform and road infrastructure elements including a sinuous weathered steel curtain wall, moulded concrete sound walls, etched acrylic panels, tapered blue poles, LED lighting and ultimately a twisted steel pedestrian bridge that frames the City of Melbourne, have been carefully arranged and integrated within the road corridor to create a five-kilometre gateway experience which is at once dynamic, sequential and memorable.
The approach becomes the experience rather than just the point of destination and illustrates the breadth of skill and sculptural opportunities that landscape architects can bring to a broad scale, cross disciplinary infrastructure project. The client, VicRoads, should be applauded for setting the framework in which a project of this calibre and significance could be realized.
NATIONAL MERIT AWARD
Recipient: Taylor Cullity Lethlean with Peter Elliot Architects
Project: North Terrace Redevelopment Stage One, Adelaide
Client: Adelaide City Council and the Government of South Australia
The jury commends this thoughtful and elegant revision to Adelaide’s civic and cultural boulevard. This project, the first of three stages, realizes the vision set out by Taylor Cullity Lethlean in the urban design framework and concept master plan which received an AILA Award of Excellence for Planning in 2004.
As leaders of this complex project, Taylor Cullity Lethlean have conveyed an important and positive message about the capacity of landscape architects to lead urban landscape design projects. The jury also commends the clients for their continuing support of Taylor Cullity Lethlean, which highlights the benefits reaped when designers are encouraged to test their concept plans in subsequent design commissions.
The design affirms the relevance of this historic boulevard to the public domain of contemporary Adelaide. The historic garden walk, a double-path system, was retained as the setting for its adjacent civic institutions; its edges, thresholds and intermediate spaces were rearticulated to encourage pedestrian movement and a diversity of activities.
The resulting mosaic of seating areas, tree plantings and forecourt plazas is a masterfully crafted, and meticulously detailed choreography of scenes which generates an urban precinct rich with cultural identity and vitality.
NATIONAL MERIT AWARD
Recipient: mcgregor + partners in association with North Sydney Council
Project: Former BP Site Public Park
Client: North Sydney Council
BP Park cleverly realizes the first stage of Clouston’s masterplan for Waverton Peninsula, a former fuel storage facility and post-industrial ruin located in critical proximity to the centre of Sydney.
The project clearly demonstrates an intelligent and contemporary approach to the reuse and interpretation of an industrial site and explores the form of the traditional stroll garden, within this stripped terrain.
Minimal intervention and a strong attitude towards urban ecological restoration and site regeneration have been fundamental to the making of this park. The selection of materials and the simplicity of detailing has been combined with a well choreographed network of spaces and pathways, to give the visitor a rich spatial experience through which the scale and character of the former industrial complex is evoked.
The thoughtful insertion of stairs, ramps, balustrades and pathways have clearly articulated the tensions between the former use and the sandstone topography of its location, allowing a complex reading of the site. Critical junctions between old and new have been resolved in a manner that strengthens the basic premise of the project: one that values the debate between naturalism, nostalgia and the need to express a contemporary condition.
NATIONAL COMMENDATION AWARD
Recipient: Harris Hobbs Landscapes
Project: Harris Hobbs Garden
To find a garden where passion and delight are woven as a continuous thread is a rare and sumptuous treat. Here is a work of great beauty which reaffirms the real art of garden making. The themes evident are of experimentation, refinement and the expression of form in the landscape.
The garden is a seamless extension of the residence with a rich sequence of rooms and courtyards exhibiting assured spatial manipulation. The expression of outdoor rooms is expanded through the colourful, eclectic and often humorous body of artworks. This garden is constantly a work in progress and reflective of Harris Hobbs’ commitment to, and enjoyment of exploration.
Synchronicity between landscape, art and architectural elements is used to create a garden much more than the sum of its parts.
NATIONAL COMMENDATION AWARD
Recipient: Aspect Sydney P/L
Project: An Eventful Path
Client: Sydney Olympic Park Authority
Like a seam of coloured jerseys or sporting scarves stitched together,An Eventful Pathis an illuminated line of brightly coloured glass set on the edge of the railway forecourt at Sydney Olympic Park.
During the day the installation appears seamlessly integrated into the station forecourt. At night, it turns into a beautiful, glowing line of colour, drawing people to the light and a series of inscribed plaques.
Both artwork and commemorative built form,An Eventful Pathis a memory line of the major international cultural and sporting events held at Olympic Park and an illuminated pathway directing crowds from station to stadium. The project explores the possibilities of monument, ritual and memory and responds with intelligence and restraint.An Eventful Pathis refreshingly simple and engaging installation which celebrates and marks everyday history.
NATIONAL COMMENDATION AWARD
Recipient: Kate Cullity, Taylor Cullity Lethlean
Project: Chaumont International Garden Festival 2004: ‘Fire Stories’
Client: Conservatoir International des parcs and Jardins et du Payusage
The jury was impressed by the beauty and provocative qualities ofFire Stories. A landscape art installation which was one of twenty out of 400 projects selected for construction at the 2004 Chaumont International Garden Festival,Fire Storiesdistils five cycles of fire ecology into an engaging work of art.
By employing a restrained palette and testing new propagation techniques,Fire Storiesdemonstrates the power of abstraction to explore and communicate cultural and ecological narratives, and reminds us that experimentation is an effective and relevant aspect of our practice.