Project Details

As Landscape Architects and Urban Designers we believe every project we carry out must, at its very core, respond to the context, the place and the local culture. We recognise that the timescale for context, place and local culture is long and includes the Traditional Owners of the land. How each design responds to this timeline will depend on the current context, the needs of the community and with an understanding of the needs of our planet into the future, including climate resilience.

While every landscape job does this, an example of our understanding of the broader impact of contextual response is the work we are undertaking for the City of Port Phillip on their Neighbourhood Character framework. We are helping CoPP deliver a series of neighbourhood character statements that go well beyond the ‘character = heritage’ approach often accepted by Councils and expected by communities. Instead we rigorously assessed the elements within the public and private realms that were essential to character and then applied a cultural and environmental lens to develop guidelines that allow for increased development while strengthening the elements that support a diverse, safe, green and welcoming neighbourhood.

Our direct involvement in the community engagement stages allowed us to work with the community to take them beyond a ‘I don’t want anything to change’ attitude and leave them with a ‘I want things to evolve for the better’.