Reviews
Can we build our way into a new future for higher education, or must something fundamental change?
Julian Raxworthy considers the evolution of the Australian university upon reviewing Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities, edited by Andrew Saniga and Robert Freestone.
ReviewEmbracing complexity and the unseen: 2023 Festival of Landscape Architecture
Ella Gauci-Seddon reviews the “Un/Earth” themed Festival of Landscape Architecture that took place in Tarntanya/Adelaide last month.
ReviewExpanding the view: Lake Tyrrell Tourism Infrastructure Design
A new system of tourist infrastructure in Victoria’s north-west improves access to a unique landscape while demonstrating the complex relationship between design and social media.
ReviewAn adaptive attitude: The Roundtable
Circular in more than one sense, The Roundtable demonstrates the power and potential of small, temporary public installations.
ReviewLandscape architecture at Melbourne Design Week 2023
Events covered circularity, experimental materials and ecological perspectives – so where were the landscape architects?
ReviewDemonstrating agency: Landscape Architects as Change Makers
A recent exhibition held at the Melbourne School of Design as part of Melbourne Design Week 2023 created a space for conversation and knowledge-sharing about design across generations and cultures.
ReviewSupporting community: Bendigo TAFE Campus Revitalization
The redevelopment of an ageing regional education campus unearths the site’s cultural narratives, creating a rich and convivial public realm that encourages a diversity of users.
ReviewFieldtrip: Grampians Peak Trail
Setting out on a four-day hike along the central section of this dramatic new walk, a group of landscape architects and spatial designers encounters a trail design well grounded in place.
ReviewDesigning Landscape Architectural Education: Studio Ecologies for Unpredictable Futures
A recent book on landscape architecture education veers away from solutions and ideologies, instead highlighting themes that open possibilities for design practice.
ReviewAn ecological engine: The Drying Green
A new park in Sydney’s south integrates natural and high-tech systems to cleanse urban waters and reference past ecologies.
ReviewDiscovery and daring: Rocks on Wheels
A surreal installation nestled within the urban fabric of Melbourne’s Southbank is a place for risky play, challenging the conventions of playgrounds, public artworks and landscape projects.
ReviewReframing our relationship with plants
Jock Gilbert unpacks the latest book in the “First Knowledges” series edited by Margo Neale.
ReviewOutback ecologies: Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden
This under-appreciated garden on the edge of the South Australian desert is a remarkable story of community-driven landscape architecture that foregrounds the extraordinary plant life of arid and semi-arid ecosystems.
ReviewA space sculpted by landscape: Victorian Family Violence Memorial
Beside a busy Melbourne intersection, an understated commemorative space honours the lives of victim survivors, looks to the future with hope and invites incidental engagement.
ReviewSlow growth: Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton
On a landfill site in regional Victoria, a botanic gardens masterplan has unfurled over decades, its many layers shaped and maintained by a committed community of volunteers and advocates.
ReviewCentring ecological regeneration: APACE
At the heart of North Fremantle community, not-for-profit organization APACE is foregrounding an approach to the environment that fosters ecological and community resilience, embraces change and gives natural systems room to move.
ReviewBeyond Wild: Gardens and Landscapes by Raymond Jungles
A recent book on the work of American landscape architect Raymond Jungles celebrates the radiant beauty of plants.
ReviewSalt and samphire: Northern Connector
In Adelaide’s north, a freeway project by Tract carefully negotiates surrounding salt fields, mangroves and wetlands.
ReviewLight, movement, growth: The Heide Healing Garden
To rejuvenate the Heide I Kitchen Garden and create a place for wellbeing, experimentation and sensory immersion, Openwork looked to the past for an appropriate design approach.
ReviewGrounds for testing: Delprat Phytoremediation Garden
On a former steelworks site in Newcastle, designers and scientists have created an experimental garden that is furthering knowledge around how plants can respond to contamination.
ReviewReimagining our relationship with waste: Polyphase
An exhibition at Melbourne Design Week explored possibilities for repurposing common waste.
ReviewAdapting and transforming our coastal environments
Rosalea Monacella reviews a recent book which offers expert insights on responding to climate change.
ReviewRestorative effects: Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS)
The design of the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) by Hassell capitalizes on the benefits of greenery on health while laying down the framework for a successful future pedestrian precinct in inner-Brisbane.
ReviewTactical urbanism: Fish Lane
A neglected post-industrial area of central Brisbane is transformed into a vibrant arts precinct through a collaborative private delivery model with a nuanced approach at both the strategic and the fine-grain scale.
ReviewCountry is an urgent call to learn from Indigenous knowledges to care for the land
Taylor Coyne reviews ‘Country: Future Fire, Future Farming,’ a recent book by Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage.
ReviewCOP26: A conference of compromise, consensus, or cause for hope?
Claire Martin considers some of the gains and setbacks from the recent COP26, which brought together representatives from 194 countries to negotiate urgent action around climate change.
ReviewMedia, climate change, adaptation and renaissance
Julian Raxworthy reflects on the 2021 Festival of Landscape Architecture and its themes of “spectacle” and “collapse.”
ReviewInterpretive acts: Pentridge Piazza, Coburg
Aspect Studios’ design for Pentridge Piazza Coburg elegantly interprets the site’s sombre history, yet raises deeper questions about the value of discomfort.
ReviewCataloguing a future city: Melbourne Cool Lines!
An exhibition in Melbourne explored ways to address climate change and the urban heat island effect by retrofitting the city with landscape infrastructures.
ReviewGathering community: Booyeembara Park
Designed in the late 1990s on the site of a former limestone quarry, Booyeembara Park was only ever partially constructed. Yet the park has grown relationships between council and community.
ReviewLateral movements: Kingsford Smith Drive Upgrade
The upgrade of Kingsford Smith Drive by Lat27 enhances experiences of the Brisbane River while illuminating women’s contributions to the city’s history.
ReviewTidal encounters: Gosford Leagues Club Park
On the NSW Central Coast, Turf Design Studio has created a vibrant park and community hub that reconnects the city of Gosford with its pre-European histories and ecologies.
ReviewChoreographing coastal complexities: Phillip Island
Phillip Island has long captivated visitors to Victoria with its dramatic landscapes and coastal ecologies. Mark Frisby reflects on the work that has gone into maintaining the island’s unique biota and framing experiences of the island for all.
ReviewRespecting Country – a ‘New Australian Design’ approach
A powerful new book by Alison Page and Paul Memmott illuminates the ways that design, through engagement with First Nations knowledges, can become an expression of respect for Country.
ReviewTexture and temporality: Y3 Garden
In the leafy Brisbane suburb of St Lucia, Dan Young Landscape Architect has created an introspective garden of close encounters.
ReviewMaking space in Sydney’s west: Western Sydney Parklands
Expressive and epic works of landscape architecture are giving Western Sydney a confident new ecological identity and much-needed breathing space.
ReviewGondwana in the city: Fish Lane Town Square
With Fish Lane Town Square, RPS has worked with Richards and Spence to transform a forgotten, underutilized space under a Brisbane railway bridge into an intimate urban park replete with tangled ferns and climbers.
ReviewHighlighting Māori thinking
A recent book by the Landscape Foundation brings Māori perspectives on landscape to the fore.
ReviewA welcome encounter: Springvale Community Precinct
A new community hub in Melbourne’s south-east celebrates the diversity of its multicultural community through an exuberant approach to colour and texture, and careful attention to detail.
ReviewCrisis and coexistence: Kerb #28
Liam Mouritz reviews the 28th issue of Kerb Journal.
ReviewQueering landscape architecture, deconstructing binaries
Beyond concepts of safety and inclusion, what other possibilities might be generated by queering landscape architecture? A lunch discussion held during Melbourne Design Week 2021 discussed the dismantling of binaries in practice.
Review