Philip Oldfield, head of school of the built environment at the University of New South Wales, has for the second year, invited Singapore based WOHA architects Richard Hassell and Mun Summ Wong to lead the Sydney Urban Lab for the university’s built environment students.
The three week intensive program resulted in some ambitious and far reaching proposals to deal with Sydney’s housing crisis and the need for greater density.
The super tall apartment buildings shown in the final model might be a way off coming to fruition anytime soon, but maybe not so the much the more palatable solar panels covering most of Randwick Racecourse (after facilities were bundled into a single spot in the huge arena). Nor the abundant food production indoors and outdoors to feed the multiple thousands that might live onsite.
In any event, the invited special guests are among those most likely to approve or influence future directions suggested. They included Helen Lochhead, Emeritus Professor at UNSW; architect Andrew O’Donnell of Allford, Hall, Monaghan and Morris, which helped deliver the Elephant Park apartments with Lendlease in London; Anita Morandini, manager of design excellence, City of Sydney; Rafaela Pandolfini, Randwick City Council; Philipa Veitch, mayor of Randwick including Claire Annesley, dean of Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture; and David Cami, executive director, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Student presenter of the final concept was Aylar Daryakenari, a master of city planning student with the university who said Sydney was growing fast, and one of the key goals of the project was to show how parts of the city might “actually look if we add density in places that we actually have amenities and infrastructure” instead of encroaching on the natural environment.
Hassell and Wong later told The Fifth Estate that food was becoming increasingly important in urban planning. In Singapore, with the help of circular food expert Rob Hulme, the pair submitted a proposal for the city state to become 100 per cent self sufficient in food.
The project didn’t get up – the government was seeking just 30 per cent self sufficiency, so it turns out that the studio was “too ambitious”, and not for the first time, laughed Wong. The learnings, however, didn’t go astray, and some made their way to the student’s work on show.
Hassell explained that indoor food growing was expensive in terms of water and energy compared with growing in the field. But creating a local market for the product makes all the difference.
In the student model, which was theoretically sited around Randwick Racecourse, the nearby hospitals, restaurants and university campus would supplement demand from residents to form a viable market for the produce.
Hassell said that the process cuts out the price of processing and packaging, transporting, refrigeration and distribution to arrive at a competitive price. In addition, it’s fresh, so abundant with nutrients that it rapidly disappears as soon as a plant is removed from its roots.
Wong adds that LED lights are the new secret to low cost energy, and the closer the plants are to the source of the light the more efficient the growing process.
Meanwhile, the pair are blending their academic mentoring/teaching work with a trip to the C-Bus project at 443 Queen Street in Brisbane, which they’ve designed in conjunction with Architectus.