Landscape Architecture Australia Issue 155 August 2017

Jennie Curtis Jennie Curtis is principal landscape architect at Fresh Landscape Design. She has spent the past decade working on landscape design strategies that allow people to adapt to change and live more sustainably. Rosie Halsmith After studying landscape architecture in Perth and Copenhagen, Rosie Halsmith has focused her practice on social design, design communication and design advocacy. She is a co-creator of SPUR Perth. Danielle Jewson Danielle Jewson is a senior urban designer at Hansen Partnership. She has diverse project experience across regional Victoria in landscape architecture, strategic planning and urban design. Karl Kullmann Karl Kullmann is a landscape architect, an urban designer and tenured associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches design studios in landscape architecture and urban design, and courses in landscape theory…

Follow us @landscapeau Like us facebook.com/landscapeau Follow us @landscapeau Visit us LandscapeAustralia.com Australia is a vast country of ancient landscapes, home to the longest living culture on earth. This issue of Landscape Architecture Australia goes bush to uncover a wealth of exciting projects and initiatives that creatively and thoughtfully respond to complex circumstances in regional Australia. Urbanization and climate change are two of the most pressing concerns that our built environment professions face today. Many agree that these forces will be more severely felt in regional areas than they will in urban areas, just as they will be more severely felt by people on lower incomes than by those on higher incomes. Recently the built environment discourse in Australia has been heavily focused on the city. Cities are where the…

ENLOCUS MASTERPLAN TO TRANSFORM REGIONAL TOWN OF RAINBOW In the north-west Victorian town of Rainbow, a masterplan designed by Enlocus will revitalize a historic school to provide space for creative production, exhibition and cultural connection. Along with five other towns, Rainbow received $350,000 from the Victorian Government’s Small Town Transformations program and Regional Arts Victoria. The project, titled The Oasis: Creativity on the Fringe of the Desert, focuses on providing flexible spaces that can simultaneously cater for everyday activities and major events. Other elements in the design include misting points, an indigenous food garden, a skatepark and legacy tree plantings. enlocus.com URBAN RESILIENCE LEADER LINA LIAKOU TO OPEN 2017 AUSTRALIAN URBAN DESIGN AWARDS The opening address for this year’s Australian Urban Design Awards will be delivered by Lina Liakou, Deputy…

WINNER COMMENDATIONS Logan City Council has won the inaugural Queensland Deputy Premier’s Award for Urban Design for its Beenleigh Town Square project, a collaboration with AECOM, MRCagney and Wilson Architects. In presenting the award, Deputy Premier and Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Jackie Trad praised Logan City Council for transforming a six-way intersection into a vibrant community space. “The council has really demonstrated a passion for great urban design in creating such a wonderful gathering and focal point for local people,” Ms Trad said. “They were bold and innovative in their approach and it’s developed a new community heart where people can gather and enjoy great events like musical performances or farmers’ markets. The Beenleigh Town Square has also generated direct economic benefits for the local business community by re-shaping…

Population decline is difficult. Clearly, it presents enormous challenges for the communities directly afflicted by population outflows. But decline also confronts the design and planning fields. At the most fundamental level, the usefulness of design is premised on the modern culture of progress, which is tied to growth. Decline undermines this alliance to such a degree that most efforts seek consciously or unconsciously to reverse the process. Perpetuating decline is perceived as a concession of failure, leaving a dearth of strategies for managing decline gracefully. Instead, design culture has a tendency to romanticize imagery taken from the frontlines of urban decay. But decline is not reducible to ruin-porn and nor is it simply growth in reverse. Viewed within a larger context, decline is a part of a dynamic process of…

In recent years there has been considerable debate about the shift to renewables in the context of diminishing resources and the spectre of climate change. In Australia, one of the most prominent and ongoing debates surrounds the development of windfarms in regional areas and their visual impact on the character and values of pastoral landscapes. In 2009 there was bipartisan agreement that the country needed to act quickly on climate change. The Gillard Government proposed a price on emissions (the carbon tax) and the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) increased from the 2001 Howard Government target of 9,500 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2010 to 45,000 GWh by 2020. Government incentives to meet this target led to a surge in the planning for windfarm projects by local and international windfarm developers,…