Introduction

In this issue, we present a series of critical reflections on a number of major projects, designed and built in Australian capital cities during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Words by Cassandra Chilton

“Growth is the most visible form of change in a designed landscape or garden, analyzing the difference between projections of growth and real growth demonstrates change.”1

The effect of time on designed spaces was a key theme of the 2019 International Festival of Landscape Architecture. Too often design is understood at the moment of its construction, with little attention given to how spaces and landscapes evolve over time. Julian Raxworthy’s recent book Overgrown: Practices between Landscape Architecture and Gardening challenges us to shift our focus to interrogate the slippage between the initial intent of designers and “in-ground performance,” which considers ongoing care and maintenance as part of design processes.

Working with these ideas, the festival featured a series of “State of the Nation” presentations on significant works constructed between 1990 and 1999 in the major state and territory capitals of Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Canberra, Adelaide and Brisbane. A representative from each state was invited to prepare a critical reflection on a seminal project – either a park or square – and consider how this particular design has evolved as a place, ecology and experience.

The 1990s were selected for the following reasons. Firstly, this period was one of profound change and cultural shift within the Australian landscape architecture profession. Influenced by postmodernism and avant-gardism, designers redirected their attention to the urban spaces of the city, and began to explore new design influences found in European precedents (rather than North American exemplars), as well as an emerging Australian postcolonial identity, ideas of urban ecology and emerging digital technologies and internet culture. These influences combined to shift how designers engaged with materials, planting strategies, surface, structure and the elaboration of form in ways that differed markedly to previous decades.

Secondly, projects designed and built during the last decade of the twentieth century have now been “in the ground” for at least twenty years and offer crucial precedents for developing understandings of how visual aesthetics, materiality, program and ecology have been updated, adapted and matured over time. Importantly, the reflections in the following pages consider the role of maintenance as part of an ongoing design process, along with shifts in public and community perception – two aspects rarely considered in the critique of design precedents.

Threaded throughout the festival, the State of the Nation presentations were surprisingly popular with the audience. The tightness of the brief led to exceptionally insightful critiques of homegrown landscape projects. We offer the following record of the presentations as a reminder to the profession of the considerable knowledge evident in our own canon, worthy of more sustained examination.

1. Julian Raxworthy, Overgrown: Practices between

Landscape Architecture and Gardening, MIT Press, 2018