Two projects by Australian architects have been shortlisted for the Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize by the Banc de Sabadell Foundation.
The Goods Line (designed by Aspect Studios and CHROFI) and Barangaroo Reserve (designed by US-based Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture with Australian-based Johnson Pilton Walker Architects and Landscape Architects) will compete against eight other projects from around the world for a $22,400 prize.
Both projects have seen a transformation of an old and unused area – Barangaroo Reserve, a one-kilometre-long hardstone apron at Barangaroo converted into an artificial headland, and, The Goods Line, a disused rail corridor reimagined as an elevated park in Sydney.
The Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize, part of the International Biennial of Landscape Architecture, will take place between 29 September and 1 October in Barcelona.
THE GOODS LINE PART ONE RECONNECTS SYDNEY AND ARCHITECTURAL LANDMARKS
The Goods Line connects the Powerhouse Museum in the north with the Transgrid Headquarters by Bates Smart at Ultimo. It also passes the new Dr Chau Chak Wing building at UTS by Frank Gehry along the way and connects more than 80,000 tertiary students, locals and visitors to the many major attractions of Sydney’s Darling Harbour.
The project repurposes an 1855-built freight corridor for coal, shale, wheat and timber that was closed in the 1980s. It reopens a key inner-city corridor that has not been walked on for 129 years.
The Goods Line has a number of study pods equipped with power points and Wi-Fi access for tertiary students, as well as an outdoor gym, an amphitheatre for performances, ping-pong tables and turfed surfaces for the greater public.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE NEWLY OPENED BARANGAROO RESERVE
Peter Walker and JPW’s design juxtaposes a rugged sandstone topography inspired by the naturalistic pre-1836 shoreline of the historic Port Jackson area, against the new modern west CBD, which will include building designs from the likes of Wilkinson Eyre architects, Renzo Piano, Francis-Jones Morehan Thorp, Rogers Stirk and Collins and Turner.
The $250 million Barangaroo Reserve project saw 10,000 Hawkesbury sandstone blocks mined from the site and used for to create the park’s naturalistic landforms. 75,000 native plants and trees (around 83 species), including Angophoras, Banksias, and Port Jackson and Moreton Bay figs, were also shipped in and planted by a massive team of landscapers and Tafe students.
