Project Statement
The expansiveness of the Sydney Basin means that as a geomorphological entity it can lack legibility. Plagued by development and a population boom pushing west, we, the site’s inhabitants, have been losing our connections to the place and land on which we live. How can we highlight the multi-scalar ebbs and flows of such an immense landscape? The portal, on the fringe of the basin, exists in counterpoint to the vastness of the plain and renders its systems and rhythms tangible.
The huge cliffs of Glenbrook Gorge are a byproduct of a unique fracturing pattern that allows rock to easily fall away. Here, the patterns of the broader landscape are rendered explicit, at a scale perceptible to humans. As an entrance to the plain, experiences at the gorge may influence one’s experience of other places on the plain. At the gorge the body feels insignificant within the landscape. The violence of rockfalls and floods and the intense stratification of the cliffs all nod to deep time and our situatedness within it – a position often difficult for the human psyche to comprehend. Within this nature, the visitor feels far from home, yet comfortable and connected.
The design choreographs views and creates experiences of compression and release, the large and the small, and the near and the far. Built elements merge with the “natural,” altering perceptions of the surrounding world. Pathways for exploring mediate between experiences of encounter and interconnectedness, jolting the visitor into an epochal consciousness that can be explored in the world beyond.
