Background:
The transformative power of landscape design in cities has raised the awareness of the
value of landscape architecture in creating living environments which satisfy a wide
spectrum of the qualities needed for meaningful urban living.
This student landscape architecture competition aims to achieve the following:
-Generate new ideas about how creative landscape design significantly
transforms lives in a variety of ways (directly and / or indirectly)
-Increase the awareness of the various benefits that innovative and strategic
landscape design holds for cities and towns.

 

Assignment:
Identify a problematic area in your city or town (or any city or town of your choice) with rich
social and cultural heritage which presents opportunities for transformation. Design the
transformation of the area through the creative and strategic application of landscape systems
and / or landscape infrastructure for the purpose of not only improving peoples’ lives, but
simultaneously maximising the development of cultural identity. The social and visual aspects
are of particular note, in the way that service delivery can be utilised as a catalyst for
transforming environments into vibrant, meaningful and delightful urban places.
The design should respond to, embrace or express the following:
-The social and cultural facets of landscape not only reside in the tangible,
but to a great degree the intangible. The comprehensive transformation of
lives through landscape systems and / or infrastructural interventions involves
understanding the possibilities of the social and cultural effects of such
interventions.
-Social and cultural phenomena (as well as strategic, creative landscape
interventions) often require innovation in representation techniques for effective
communication (especially to people who are not necessarily designers)

-Regarding existing contextual phenomena, the emphasis should not only be
on analysis, but rather the strategic, creative and / or innovative translation
into design.
-Economy of means (thrift in design); however not necessarily with the
emphasis on minimal intervention, but rather on maximum return on landscape
‘investment’ in a diversity of ways.
-Infrastructure provision (service delivery) can be utilised for far more than
just meeting people’s basic needs, but with creative and strategic thinking can
be a powerful tool for social, economic , ecological and significant visual
transformation of places (landscape as an agent for capacity development).
-Strategic, gradual (yet significant) transformation of environments in a world
with diminishing available capital and resources is becoming an increasingly
appropriate approach (managing the transformation of landscapes towards a
more sustainable future)
The specific scale of intervention/s is not specified, however the posters should illustrate the
proposed design at conceptual, precinct / district, and detail levels. Decision-making
(approaches, principles, strategies etc.) should also be apparent, and not only analysis and
product.

 

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 3RD PLACE, MERIT AWARD PRIZE