Category: Urban Strategy

A living, digital resource of Sydney’s green infrastructure

In 2016, the NSW Government Architect and Greater Sydney Commission engaged us to develop the strategic vision for the Sydney Green Grid into a comprehensive spatial framework. This involved collating extensive GIS data and identifying and prioritising hundreds of projects so they could be embedded into Sydney’s district plans. Following the success of the project, in 2018, we were engaged to transform the Green Grid Spatial Framework into a GIS dataset with an accompanying methodology to help government agencies coordinate green infrastructure projects across the Sydney Basin.

A tool for collaboration

As we developed our implementation methodology, we interviewed state government agencies to understand their decision-making process, agendas and barriers to developing and delivering strategic Green Grid projects. Their responses were eye-opening. All were keen to deliver great results within their own department, but there was little cross departmental collaboration. We realised that this was the potential of the project, to create a digital platform for collaboration across all levels of government to track delivery of the city’s future green infrastructure network.

A coordinated approach to funding

Green infrastructure is currently delivered by many agencies, using funding from a variety of sources. Our work allows each agency to input data about the allocation and source of funding and develop a streamlined approach. The GIS dataset links the spatial framework of the Green Grid network to other planning tools and datasets, including demographics, infrastructure, transport, housing performance, zoning, planning priorities, recreation, ecology and hydrology. This enables seamless integration with the decision-making workflows of different organisations, developing an evidence base to support targeted planning and funding of Sydney’s green infrastructure network.

‘Sidestepping yet another planning report’

This project harnessed the potential of blue green infrastructure to lay out Sydney’s newest city, the Western Sydney Aerotropolis. In the six months before statutory instruments were created, our aspirational city plan made its way to the very top of government – a Parkland City laid out around a connected system of blue and green infrastructure, designed with respect for Country. Although never made public, the plan was translated into guidelines that influenced politicians and inspired precinct planners to promote a new type of urbanism – one led by landscape architecture, that respects rather than degrades the landscape and its natural systems.

Changing the conversation

When we began the project, we were asked: what are we going to do about South Creek? At that stage, South Creek was graphically represented in plans as a featureless, flood-prone spine, and in 3D visualisations as a wide, glassy waterway curving dramatically through the future city. One representation was reductive, and the other misleading. Our work filled an important gap in the planning process to communicate the actual character of the landscape. We overlaid flood zones with existing roads, vegetation, topography, views and certified urban footprint areas to understand their combined potential. Our work enabled government stakeholders to move past habitual stalemates and discuss actual possibilities: how large parks can create a city’s identity, the importance of cooling breezes on ridgelines and how future residents might interact with the water systems that sustain their daily lives.

A city that respects Country

Our plan comprised one of the first data-driven visualisations of the Parkland City that showed state government clients a path forward. We used GIS desktop mapping, site visits and compelling graphics to capture an elusive vision on paper, so people could start to grasp the scale and implications of what ‘Parkland City’ could really mean. The plan drew on a body of work developed during our Sydney Green Grid project, collaborations with Western Sydney Parklands Trust and urban design character studies of South Creek for DPIE. Our expertise in blue green infrastructure and deep knowledge of Sydney’s historical development gave our client the confidence to challenge standard approaches to city planning and embed blue green infrastructure in the precinct plans.

Read the Landscape Australia article here.

Open space planning for maximum benefits

We provided detailed open space assessment and public domain proposals for Homebush, as part of the NSW State Government’s Transport Oriented Development Accelerated Precincts Program. The delivery of new open space and parks to support growth in Homebush is an important component of this rezoning. The opportunity in this precinct is to improve and maximise the connection to major parks, providing connected recreational, ecological and hydrological systems through the open space network. With Sydney Olympic Park and Bicentennial Park at its doorstep, plus five major rail and metro stations, we demonstrated how Homebush can offer excellent walking and cycling access to open space as it densifies in response to new land zonings.

Major, connected green space at the heart of the Homebush precinct

Our strategy proposed a major new district park at the heart of the precinct that connects walking and cycling routes. We located a network of local and small parks at stations, shopping centres and within residential neighbourhoods to provide long term amenity. Through a set of principles, diagrams and plans, we demonstrated how parks could be connected through major green corridors as well as the fine grain urban network.

‘Drawing with a genuine certainty upon the Canberra bush setting and regional landscape…’

In 2010 Mark Tyrrell and Sharon Wright won two of the major modules for the University of Canberra Campus Design Competition. These modules were the Campus Character Plan and the University Green. Tyrrell Studio were subsequently engaged to produce a comprehensive campus character plan over the following 18 months.

‘interprets and elevates the local context..’

‘The proposal interprets and elevates the local context. It takes and works with the existing condition – the ancient weathered landform, the dry forest, the ephemeral wetland and the watercourse…’

– Extract from the Jury Report

‘Sculpted landforms, subtle planting regimes, wetlands, rain and sedge gardens…’

‘The proposed University Green is a subtle combination of pathways, some meandering and some rectilinear, with sculpted landforms, subtle planting regimes, wetlands, rain and sedge gardens. It avoids the ubiquitous formal urban park, opting for a seamless composition of a rich and diverse native parkland with strong links to the greater bush setting, the concourse and the broader campus. The requirements of the brief for the ‘Green’ to provide for a variety of activities and to demonstrate sustainable practices and biodiversity are met with confidence and a delicate touch.’

–  Extract from Jury Report

The river at the heart of the city

‘In 2011, Mark Tyrrell and Daniel Griffin won the Parramatta Ideas on Edge Design Competition with their scheme Innovation Ecosystem. Innovation districts are now a dime a dozen, but Tyrrell and Griffin picked up on the concept before their widespread proliferation. Few innovation districts capture both the urbanity and wild proximity to nature evoked in their fecund and feral proposal.’

– Landscape Architecture Australia

Moments of Architectural Drama

‘Tyrrell and Griffin’s winning concept focuses upon blurring the physical and metaphysical boundaries between the local culture of Parramatta, and its local ecosystem, finding moments of architectural drama at their junction. The scheme recognizes that the site is located at a brackish point of the river where the fresh water from the inland meets the salt water from the coast. This mixing of waters produces a highly diverse ecosystem at a local level. It is a place where species of fish meet, where salt and freshwater tolerant plant species are found and where hundreds of birds are attracted to the mix.’ (Arch Daily)

Program Intensifiers

The design breaks down a series of abrupt and divisive river edges by laying a generative grid over river and land. The grid resolves itself into a variety of functional built elements in the design but also acts as a conceptual tool to blur land and water. Next, a series of ‘program intensifiers’ are layered on the design. Local culture is intensified through the creation of an urban incubator for innovation and ideas. This takes the form of small studio spaces, research labs, aged and childcare, performance spaces and university and corporate support shopfronts. Together, this small-scale urbanism plugs into the disused rear of shops and creates a humming cultural district which moves out over the river.

An urbanism ‘of’ the river

The site is allowed to flood regularly, and runoff is collected in a mosaic of rain gardens that treat storm water from the urban core of the design and release it clean to the river. Ultimately, the river has no edge in the final proposal; it is an urbanism ‘of ‘ a river rather than ‘beside’ a river. (Arch Daily)