29 March 2010 – For those who fret about where to place an extra several million people that could be destined for their city or state over the coming decades, how about cities in the desert, or contained in peripheral areas such as university campuses, big box shopping centres, business parks or industrial estates?
Or how about a city built around recreational reserves and market gardens to establish a series of “interlinked, self-sustaining districts dispersed along a transport ring?”
Plans for a good sustainable city could also do well to include the concept of a “Fear Free City”, based on a “theory of hope and the desirable”.
These scenarios are just some of the inspiring and sometimes radical ideas that tumbled out of the Ideas for Australia’s cities 2050+ competition to be exhibited in the Australian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale and made it to the shortlist.
Australian Institute of Architects’ 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale Creative Directors, architectural photographer John Gollings and architect Ivan Rijavec last week announced a short list of 17 proposals from 129 submissions to the project.
The team will hold an exhibition, NOW + WHEN Australian Urbanism, to highlight six of Australia’s most interesting urban and anti-urban regions as they are ‘NOW’, before dramatically representing the 17 futuristic urban environments from the competition imagining a ‘WHEN’ we reach 2050 and beyond.
Mr Rijavec said the exhibition in Venice will be presented in a completely new form of “3D stereoscopic technology that will change the way Australian urbanism is seen.
“Projections of the stereoscopic 3D images have exceeded all expectations,” Mr Rijavec said.
“When shown at exclusive previews they have left their audiences breathless.
“In what promises to be the Urban Century, the design and planning of our cities is fundamental to our prosperity and survival. The overarching message of the Venice Biennale Exhibition is that Australian identity has gone ‘walkabout’, it has come out of the bush and bedded down in our urban centres.
“Though outback and bush myths remain seminal to our culture, there is no doubt that the Australian collective consciousness is now urban.
“The extraordinary sequences of images to be displayed in the WHEN component comprise a cyberspace of urban dreaming, that include fantasies, poetic encapsulations, allegories and strong theoretical propositions that are woven into a cinematic performance guaranteed to leave the mind reeling.
“This will be an exhibition few visitors will forget.”
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17 submissions shortlisted for Venice | ||
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Project Name |
Team Name |
Team Members |
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Sydney 2050: Fraying Ground |
RAG URBANISM |
Richard Goodwin (Richard Goodwin Art/Architecture), Andrew Benjamin, Gerard Reinmuth (TERROIR) |
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Symbiotic City |
Steve Whitford (University of Melbourne, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning) + James Brearley (BAU Brearley Architects and Urbanists, Adjunct Professor RMIT) |
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The Fear Free City |
Justyna Karakiewicz, Tom Kvan and Steve Hatzellis |
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A City of Hope |
EDMOND & CORRIGAN |
Design – Peter Corrigan (everything), Realisation – Michael Spooner (and support) |
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Mould City |
Colony Collective |
Madeleine Beech, Jono Brener, Nicola Dovey, Peter Raisbeck and Simon Wollan |
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Sedimentary City |
Brit Andresen and Mara Francis |
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Aquatown |
NH Architecture with Andrew Mackenzie |
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Multiplicity |
John Wardle Architects & Stefano Boscutti |
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Project Name |
Team Name |
Team Members |
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Ocean Bio City |
Arup Biomimetics |
Alanna Howe, Alexander Hespe |
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-41+41 |
Peck Dunin Simpson Architects |
Fiona Dunin, Alex Peck, Andrew Simpson in association with Martina Johnson, Third Skin, Eckersley Garden Architecture, Angus McIntyre, Tim Kreger |
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Survival vs Resilience |
BKK Architects, Village Well, Strategic Property Analysis, Mathematical Modelling |
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Terra Form Australis |
HASSELL, Holopoint & The Environment Institute |
Tim Horton, Tony Grist, Prof Mike Young, Ben Kilsby, Sharon Mackay, Susie Nicolai, Mike Mouritz |
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Island Proposition 2100 (IP2100) |
Scott Lloyd, Aaron Roberts (room11) and Katrina Stoll, + Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) |
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Implementing the Rhetoric |
Harrison and White with Nano Langenheim |
Marcus White, Stuart Harrison and Nano Langenheim |
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How Does it Make You Feel (HDIMYF) |
Ben Statkus (Statkus Architecture), Daniel Agdag, Melanie Etchell, William Golding, Anna Nguyen, Joel Ng |
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Loop-Pool / Saturation City |
McGauran Giannini Soon (MGS), Bild + Dyskors, Material Thinking |
MGS – Eli Giannini, Jocelyn Chiew, Catherine Ranger, Bild – Ben Milbourne, Dyskors – Edmund Carter, Material Thinking – Paul Carter |
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a tale of two cities |
Billard Leece Partnership Pty Ltd |
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