Meg Davies

EPHEMERAL FUTURES,
COMFORTING LANDSCAPES

The allocated plot is constantly in flux: it is surrounding by temporary student accommodation, vulnerable to both flash flooding and drought and submitted to the intense heat of a Melbourne summer and the cold wet weather of Melbourne winter. A future park design in this landscape needs to accommodate and fit in with such everchanging conditions, some of which will increase with the effects of global warming. It needs to be flexible to a range of environmental conditions, whilst also engaging a diverse student population and general park users with a desirable experience depending on what these conditions might be. With this in mind, the intent that has guided my design choices for this urban park is “EPHEMERALITY”.

Ephemerality in this context means something short-lived and everchanging. It is a guiding intent to generate a design that both mitigates and celebrates the ephemeral qualities of the environment within the growing and changing student population of Carlton. In this park ephemerality has generated the focus on spatial fluctuations, user flexibility, seasonal transitions, water fluctuations and weather and its increasingly unpredictable extremes.