Throughout the late part of April the team at Arcadia Landscape Architecture joined the guys from Urban Future Organization to design a new official residence for the Prime Minister of Australia on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra as part of the celebrations for the Centenary of Canberra. The brief looked at providing a private home environment for the Prime Minister and his or her partner and family without a hindrance/impact from official events or public receptions taking place elsewhere on the site.
Celebrating Canberra’s 100th year as our designed capital presents an opportunity to demonstrate how we have grown and evolved as a country. Since the birth of our nation our understanding of the world we inhabit has expanded exponentially, as our population and our cities grow there is a pressing impetus to develop a more symbiotic relationship with the land, a new understanding of place.
As the elected representative of our country the prime minister’s voice is perhaps heard clearest. Their choices, actions and consequences define our nation within and without. The official residence of our chosen head of government should reflect our society and the beliefs by which we define ourselves. The official home of our united voice should manifest our role as custodians of the land, reflect our cultural values and reflect our attitudes. The era of considering houses, gardens, driveways and forests as separate things is decisively over. The earth we inhabit is a complex adaptive system comprised of vast interconnected elements with the ability to change and grow. A sustainable site will emerge from a groundswell of landscape inspired design fused and cohesive, integrative and adaptive, continuously growing and learning.
The architectural proposal looks towards the dichotomy of the dwelling and the landscape by blending the natural and the artificial operation of geometry which is determined by the organisation of the internal spaces and attempts to become virtually indistinguishable in its setting by creating tears, splits and bifurcations within this new topography. The project looks towards both the idea of building ecology, where by landscape and building are woven together through the interconnection of materials, structure and form, and the icon of the individual residential plot, sitting within the vast landscape setting. The landscape was considered as an evolutionary system in constant flux, not a static image. The strategy for this site invokes the art of engagement, allowing the ad hoc emergence of social and ecological patterns to interact, inform and adapt.
A positive collaboration which showed two firms exploring and challenging the built form movement in Australia. We look forward to getting involved in similar works in the future…
Written By Matthew Simpkins