Cataloguing 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.

The dominance of redundant and destructive neoliberal regimes, the disarray caused by green capitalism and the preponderance of techno-optimistic geo-engineering schemes amid the emergencies of a rapidly changing climate have been accelerating the need to engage in the research and dissemination of ideas about alternative ways of living together. In a region where the mode of managing resources according to a plan of economic or political development inherited from European systems has, for some time now, been raising serious doubts about the sustainability of our ways of life, an arsenal of alternative perspectives that foreground hybridity, networks and a renewed understanding of human-nature relations have been reevaluating the power, resilience and benefits of autochthonous (and hopefully Indigenous) environmental engineering approaches.

It is within this context that the Melbourne Cool Lines! project emerged in Melbourne, close to a decade ago. A research collaboration between Xpace architecture and urban design, Monash University, the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities and the City of Melbourne, the project explores ways to address climate change and the urban heat island effect by retrofitting the city with architecture, landscape and infrastructural measures. Hosted at City Library Gallery in 2020, the Melbourne Cool Lines! exhibition presented the results of that work as a series of future scenarios that investigate the potential of linear green corridor policies. To examine climate change issues and urban heat island effects, the research team selected areas in Melbourne’s north-west subject to planned developments – a process which allowed them to explore situations that might then be applied to other parts of the city.

Alongside current landscape strategies that reconnect fragmented urban environments using existing “slow” infrastructures, such as greenways and bicycle network, Cool Lines proposes approaches that include the re-wilding of urban areas, the collection of surface water for cooling, and the creation of ecological and aeration corridors. The blueprint project integrates multi-scalar propositions into new urban ecologies within existing urban contexts. Its design philosophy rethinks living spaces in multiple biospheres in a city facing significant demographic and spatial expansion. Renewing the dialogue between humans and non-humans is key to Xpace and Monash University project leads Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung’s design approaches which demonstrate ingenuity in how they renew the parameters around existing designs. The application of their approach in the fields of city design and planning reflects the current resurgence of the environmental humanities and their relevance in seeking a different approach to human-nature relations in built environment design.

Along Moonee Ponds Creek, an industrial area that is at times dry and then subject to seasonal flooding, a proposal imagines swampland rejuvenation that stimulates new land uses and allows us to envision the future of climate-sensitive interventions,in accordance with the ecological ethics that come with the deep understanding of the site as a cultural landscape.

Another thrilling demonstration is presented through a proposal for an Indigenous estuary park in the Docklands where Indigenous techniques of hydrological engineering and maintenance catalyse the reintroduction of native flora and fauna and an ensuing increase in biodiversity. This lush proposal advocates for greater acknowledgment from the built environment discipline of pre-settler practices and customs, and the role they can play in shaping future Australian urban models.

Rainforest Activity Centre, a proposal by Kristen Levey, Monash University.

Rainforest Activity Centre, a proposal by Kristen Levey, Monash University.

Image: VR model by Duy Phan, Monash University.

Other proposals in the exhibition engage the issue of derelict landscapes (an issue exacerbated due to the invisibility of many of these spaces) and whether the anthropization of delicate ecological dynamics might enable their sustainability. The alliance of both innovative and timeless environmental technological approaches, such as the considered inhabitation of flooded areas, avoids this problem of invisibility and lack of access, instead integrating these sites into the complex economy of place. Across the work displayed, urban and environmental strategies offer new modes of existence that foreground impermanent and shifting ecologies and stimulate the production of new forms of knowledge across different disciplines and their various stakeholders.

Within Interchange Oasis, a proposal by Xpace architecture and urban design, Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung, the distrust of controversial environmental histories that symbolizes the current ecological and ontological crisis has facilitated the renewal of “eco-philosophy,” allowing the resurgence of the river that once meandered beneath Melbourne’s Elizabeth Street to give birth to a wetland oasis that redefines urban biotopes. The project questions the missing parts of our built environment in a congested and challenging site, proposing a walkable public landscape and urban crossing that harnesses the health benefits of integrated ecological systems for the benefits of hospital patients and staff.

Interchange Oasis, a proposal by Xpace architecture and urban design, Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung.

Interchange Oasis, a proposal by Xpace architecture and urban design, Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung.

Image: Duy Phan

Interchange Oasis, a proposal by Xpace architecture and urban design, Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung.

Interchange Oasis, a proposal by Xpace architecture and urban design, Maud Cassaignau and Markus Jung.

Image: Duy Phan

Referring to the French architect Claude Parent’s warnings about sprawling cities and “making the city over the city,” the Cool Lines’ pitch embraces complex thoughts about the future of our global urban environments, both testifying to their vitality while at the same time viewing their achievements with renewed criticality.

Urban heat islands, climate change and other conditions of the Anthropocene are symptoms of our ignorance towards ecological knowledge – a state of affairs that has spurred many environmental diplomats to advocate for a more respectful dialogue with the natural systems that support us. The ethical failure in the understanding and approach to the urban, to architecture, and to landscape, has also spurred the rise of environmental whistle-blowers who have been assisting in the transformation of ground-breaking visions of our collective future into beneficial, responsible and humane interventions through the modification of our views on the traditional nature/culture divide.

The work in the Melbourne Cool Lines! show is certainly stimulating – however, we must remain cautious. We have yet to see whether our city builders can successfully translate these aspirations into on-the-ground progression, and that the built environment profession can demonstrate genuine ethical acts of human beings towards solidarity with nature. Building upon themes now widely discussed around the world, Melbourne Cool Lines! presents a precious and well-reasoned catalogue for a future, more unified Melbourne.

The Melbourne Cool Lines! exhibition was on show at Melbourne City Library Gallery from 24 January to 16 February 2021. The Melbourne Cool Lines! film is now on display as part of the CityX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion (Sezione del Padiglione Italia) at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. The Biennale runs until until 21 November 2021.

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