278
Collins Wharf

278 Collins Wharf

This is a landscape where no land exists. The Collins Wharf project is a park along the northern edge of the industrial wharf between Victoria Harbour and the Yarra River. The brief asked us to reconsider what the public space of Docklands might mean and how it might perform, 30 years after the formation of the Docklands Authority. During those 30 years, our understanding of what it means to design public space has been totally recast by the consequences of the climate crisis, by emerging ideas of reconciliation and designing on Country, and by the reconsideration of ideas of preservation and adaptive reuse of the material of built form. In place of open lawn, we propose a native ecology. In place of the new, we propose the preservation of the existing supplemented by the recycled and the reused. In place of an open invitation to use a space, we propose diverse and immersive spaces that offer choice and create a home for flora and fauna as well as people. In beginning to engage simultaneously with ideas of the pre-colonial, the post-industrial and the Anthropocene we intend to create a heightened version of the site as it is today – a place where the new, the old, and the ancient are adjacent to one another and have an exchange.

Year 2022–
Location Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country / Victoria Harbour VIC
Client Lend Lease
Collaborators Sarah Lynn Rees, Finding Infinity, GHD, Robert Bird Group and Contour
Builders Hickory
Project Team Benjamin Kronenberg, Candice Teok, Dylan Gilmore, Marijke Davey, Mark Jacques, Nick Ng
Renders Openwork
Year 2022–
Location Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country / Victoria Harbour VIC
Client Lend Lease
Collaborators Sarah Lynn Rees, Finding Infinity, GHD, Robert Bird Group and Contour
Builders Hickory
Project Team Benjamin Kronenberg, Candice Teok, Dylan Gilmore, Marijke Davey, Mark Jacques, Nick Ng
Renders Openwork