The work being produced in Australia’s landscape architecture schools is at the forefront of pushing boundaries and making new connections in the discipline, but much of it does not transcend faculty walls to be seen by a wider community. The Landscape Architecture Australia Student Prize identifies and shares the finest graduating projects produced in landscape architecture education across the country. Australian universities each nominate a student based on their end-of-year presentation. The projects are then blindly reviewed by an independent jury, which awards one student the national prize.
Jury comment
The jury is pleased to announce Towards Reconciliation: Decolonizing Design in Melbourne’s Contemporary Cultural Plaza by Hiu Ying (Jenny) Tin of The University of Melbourne as this year’s national winner. The project explores the complexities of engaging First Nations narratives in built environment projects and tests how landscape architects can decolonize their design practices. The project creates strategies that disturb existing relationships, unsettling established ways of thinking about the site and its many components and layers. Its success resides in developing tactics that enable us to re-examine and reconsider familiar ground. This opens up the site for reworking. The strategies the designer has proposed are scale-able and have the potential to be applied to other locations. The jury notes that good practice often begins with engaging Traditional Owners perspectives, while acknowledging the challenges involved with undertaking this in a university project limited by institutional timeframes.
National prize winner
Towards Reconciliation: Decolonizing Design in Melbourne’s Contemporary Cultural Plaza – Jenny Tin, The University of Melbourne
Prize winners
Nature-based Solutions for Urban Verges in Mediterranean Cities – Lisa Liu, The University of Western Australia
Creating Safer Cities for Women: A Case Study of Haig Park – Hannah Coppell, The University of Canberra
Mobile Territories: Documenting and Archiving Melbourne’s Commission Housing – Peter Grant, RMIT University
Levelling the Urban Playing Field – Lauren Williams, Queensland University of Technology
Sturt River Revitalization – An Chuang, The University of Adelaide
Richmond River Atlas – Stephen Saines, University of Technology, Sydney
Alternative Environmental Offset: Shorebird Habitat Protection and Acquisition – Sze Wah (Naomi) Chan, UNSW, Sydney
The 2023 Landscape Student Prize comprised Jasmine Ong (national director, Australian Institute of Landscape Architects), Mark Jacques (founder, Openwork) and Emily Wong (editor, Landscape Architecture Australia). The prize is presented by Landscape Architecture Australia magazine and LandscapeAustralia.com and supported by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.
