2015 Landscape Architecture Australia Student Prize: RMIT University

Project statement

The Space In-Between takes a multi-scalar approach to post-industrial reintegration. It uses phytoremediation strategies as a framework to allow a more resilient and diverse urban fabric to accumulate over time. The way that we produce and consume goods is changing. This is resulting in a series of contaminated post-industrial void spaces, which this project recognizes as opportunities for new forms of urban living, new modes of production and new typologies of green infrastructure. The Space In-Between is focused on the highly industrialized suburb of Brooklyn, in Melbourne’s inner west. Brooklyn is a landscape dominated by quarries, landfill and large industrial estates. Lying only ten kilometres from the CBD, these industrial spaces are facing a series of increasing pressures to transform. The project taps into this condition of post-industrial vacancy and contamination, proposing a series of phytoremediation transition parks that would allow land owners to break down these super parcels into a connected urban fabric throughout the process of their remediation. The Space In-Between represents a new model of productive urban park that staggers development from contaminated brownfield into productive, mixed-use residential community, allowing people into the process of remediation and building a sense of narrative and ownership in the space over time.