Making time in practice

Time is a crucial dimension of both landscapes and design, yet our projects are often restricted by limited timelines, static modes of representation and fixed outcomes. How can a richer engagement with time transform our modes of practice?

A fundamental wonder of landscape, time engenders the cycles of life; growth and decay; light and dark; interconnectedness; patience and dedication. As landscape architects, the subject of our work is living, growing, and evolving. We rely on time for our projects to reach their potential, but we are often restricted by short project programs, profit-driven practice models and static performance requirements. If we are to design for the future, then we need to consider – and reconsider – how we can incorporate time into our relationships with place and community, in how we structure and plan for our engagements with site, and in how we engage with processes of experimentation and learning.

Issues with current practice

Contemporary professional landscape practice suffers from the legacy of decades spent conforming to other built environment professions’ processes and protocols. Conventional contractual models structured around feasibility, concept, design development, tender and construction phases result in landscape architecture services producing “finished” products for sites and “maintenance” plans that reinforce ideas of static, non-regenerative landscapes and deny our ability to foster ongoing relationships with these sites and their communities. Lean fees and program constraints, and now the prevalence of online meetings, dictate that often there is only allowance for one site visit at the start of a project. This results in a surface view of landscape, with limited ability to understand in any depth use over different times of the day, week or year, the impact of changing weather conditions on the site, and many other intangible aspects of place. Further to this, budgets for gardening or maintenance are often negligible and sometimes non-existent, and projects may be used for political pork barrelling without consideration of what sites and their users may require in the long term.

Practice models based on architecture mean that the drawing (in plan) is the principal mode of communication and contract. The problem with this, as we know, is that a drawing is static, whereas landscape as a medium is dynamic. Landscape architects have experimented with staged development and master planning, as exemplified during the Landscape Urbanism trend of the early twenty-first century, but where a proposal included projections of how the design might appear, perform or otherwise unfold at various points in the future, these projections assumed an ordered and contextless understanding of growth, not a messy and responsive one. Traditional masterplans that present a “final” outcome for a place generally fail to consider how a site’s spatial, social, cultural and political context might change.

So, how might we begin to rethink some of our practices to foster a deeper and richer engagement with time for the benefits of our communities?

Testing Grounds at Southbank, Melbourne offered a temporary space for creative practices across art and design.

Testing Grounds at Southbank, Melbourne offered a temporary space for creative practices across art and design.

Image: Millie Cattlin

Caretaker roles

What if we occupy a site during the design process? Millie Cattlin and Joseph Norster of These Are The Projects We Do Together have been collaborating since their first project at Testing Grounds, an experimental art space in Melbourne’s Southbank, soon to be relocated to the Queen Victoria Market. Managed by Creative Victoria, Cattlin and Norster have been designing, programming and operating the site for the past 10 years. They offer an example of an alternative form of practice that the discipline might learn from. Their on-site presence through the life of a project, ongoing relationship with community and place, and extended and expanded involvement in each project offers insight into how we might transform the traditional client-designer relationship.

At all their projects, they are responsible for the operations, programming, design and sometimes construction. The three sites that they run have been with them for many years and have uncertain futures that open opportunities for unconventional use and process. At Siteworks in Brunswick, it’s the incidental and anecdotal results of their presence on site that have led to decisions about what will happen with the site. The observation of unintended or unanticipated uses leads to alteration in design approach.

A house on the site is heritage listed, but the school that wraps around the site is considered worthless to development proposals. Cattlin and Norster, over the years, have met countless people who have described the nostalgia they feel for the old school building, while recognising the heritage building as being a place of painful memories, associated with punishment and hierarchy. What is considered as heritage has been unsettled because of the conversations that have taken place and the value people place on different aspects of the site. As a result of spending time on site to gain these insights, the memory of the school building will be retained through a strategy of adaptive re-use.

Installing Siteworks signage pasteups written in Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung language.

Installing Siteworks signage pasteups written in Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung language.

Image: Georgia Ryan

View of the school building (left) and heritage-listed Sherwood House (right) at Siteworks in inner-north Brunswick.

View of the school building (left) and heritage-listed Sherwood House (right) at Siteworks in inner-north Brunswick.

Image: Millie Cattlin

Self-initiated projects

Cattlin and Norster’s work at The Quarry provides several approaches that landscape practice might consider. An 86,000-square-metre former quarry in the Otways, The Quarry is a site that is currently undergoing rehabilitation, self-initiated and run by These Are The Projects We Do Together and funded through grants, loans and small personal investments. Contra to the traditional process for mine rehabilitation, the approach at The Quarry is primarily cultural, which then encompasses the environmental. Students, design studios, artists and designers can apply to use the site for experimental education or creative works. The performative, on-site work that students and artists have undertaken there over the last few years has provided the design brief for the building that is now proposed for the site and includes accommodation, kitchen, studio space and a toilet block.

Retaining the planning status of the quarry and extending the rehabilitation of the site opens creative possibilities that would otherwise be excluded, for example, using explosives on the site. The rehabilitation isn’t finished once a set of performance requirements are met, which questions our relationship to landscape and perceptions of damage and repair. Cattlin and Norster are facilitating programs and engaging in site-specific research that influence the spatial trajectory of the quarry and surrounds. The results of their collaborators’ presence on site, making rather than drawing, allows a stronger connection and understanding that is more responsive to the specifics of the site.

The Quarry in the Otway Ranges hosts experiments in building, architecture, education and technology.

The Quarry in the Otway Ranges hosts experiments in building, architecture, education and technology.

Image: Isabel Holloway

The Sublime, a multi-artform performance at The Quarry by Arie Rain Glorie and These Are The Projects We Do Together for the 2018 Winter Wild Festival.

The Sublime, a multi-artform performance at The Quarry by Arie Rain Glorie and These Are The Projects We Do Together for the 2018 Winter Wild Festival.

Image: Ivan Masic

Catalytic plans and nimble practice

Can we move away from the traditional masterplan? An alternative approach to conventional staged masterplans could be catalytic development plans: considering incremental pieces of work that might not necessarily have a spatial outcome, but that might be critical for enabling the care of Country and quality places. Steve Mintern at Office, a not-for-profit design and research practice, has been working on several sites over the years that consider inputs such as time, money, labour, and culture, and that focus on issues such as the development of cultural knowledge, job opportunities and outcomes that a future project might then draw upon. At Culpra Station in western New South Wales, Office in collaboration with Indigenous community engagement consultancy Kulpa Mardita and RMIT Landscape Architecture for client Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation proposed a “map of development” that included inputs such as infrastructure, teaching, funding, labour, partnerships and skills – and outputs such as economic, ecological and cultural improvement and capacity, training and job growth. This led them to design a website and a branding strategy for the corporation, which in turn has helped with the process of applying for more funding, enabled greater recognition of the Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation as an organization, and facilitated the development of future projects on the site. This has been invaluable for both the regeneration of the site and the growth of the corporation for the Barkandji people. Planning in this manner allows for flexibility, ongoing relationships to be fostered and smaller-scale projects to occur when possible or required.

Office collaborated with Kulpa Mardita and RMIT Landscape Architecture to create a “map of development” for Culpra 
Milli Aboriginal Corporation.

Office collaborated with Kulpa Mardita and RMIT Landscape Architecture to create a “map of development” for Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation.

Image: Office

RMIT landscape architecture lecturer Jock Gilbert (left), Uncle Barry Pearce (middle) and Steve Mintern (right) at Culpra Station.

RMIT landscape architecture lecturer Jock Gilbert (left), Uncle Barry Pearce (middle) and Steve Mintern (right) at Culpra Station.

Image: Alessia Macchiavello

Office offers up an alternative practice model that challenges the conventional profit-driven model and results in considerable gains for community, environment and designer. As a registered charity, the studio has a constitution, which states that they engage in practice that is for the public benefit. This model that rejects working for private capital also encourages consideration of place and not just “the project.”

To design in a way that is responsive to change, builds upon itself, and allows for and encourages cultural and ecological progression, we need to rethink our standard set of drawing conventions, our current contractual processes and the structures that are precluding us from designing with dynamic inputs and ongoing relationships. By inviting time into our processes by encouraging client meetings on site, engaging with community and Traditional Custodians and allowing for more time in place, we can nurture a greater connection to Country and a deeper and richer knowledge of place.

Source

Practice

Published online: 23 Oct 2022
Words: Jess Stewart
Images: Alessia Macchiavello, Andrew Clapham, Georgia Ryan, Isabel Holloway, Ivan Masic, Jeremy Shiell, Millie Cattlin, Office

Issue

Landscape Architecture Australia, August 2022

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