Landscape Studio 4: Strategies

Studio leader: Christopher Newman

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The City of Wyndham and the City of Greater Geelong are two of the fastest growing LGA’s in Australia, with population growth and economic activity being two of the main drivers shaping this region. The changes currently in play, place ecological and infrastructure systems under extreme pressure leaving existing ecology, and infrastructure fragmented and dysfunctional.

The HSR corridor as green infrastructure can mitigate issues with population burden, water protection, and management of natural resources, carefully and within a context of ecological balance. With further understanding of the balance of these complexities and the ecological systems built upon at varied scales, the more communities may harness the natural energies, flows and materials. The HSR as green infrastructure will come with new opportunities too, enabling development to extend to neighbouring cities, while rewarding human settlements with equilibrium in nature. Green infrastructure planning is positioned to provide solutions to industrial age problems.

Using ecologically sensitive landscape planning theory, open data, and ArcGIS desktop, students will strategically investigate locations for the HSR corridor within a systems perspective. Each project will aim to create a network of designed ecosystem services which propose to mitigate any damaging effects and build resilience back into the existing ecological systems and communities, so development may coexist with the natural environment.

Students are invited to produce green infrastructure strategies at three spatial levels (region, suburb, and site) through a series of topics related to green infrastructure. A comprehensive design process will be applied to each project as evidence-based outcome.

Landscape Architecture 2020_summer