Design Competition: Bradfield Central Park

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The brief for Bradfield Central Park was an invitation to create a world-class destination where local and international visitors could explore and discover Australia’s newest and most extraordinary city. Arcadia’s concept allowed the beauty and wonder of the natural world to seamlessly blend with innovation and technology, creating an awe-inspiring, immersive experience that captures the spirit of Country and inspires next generation Australia.

To design with this ethos fully and respectfully at the forefront, it was essential for the design team to seek the catalyst of this landscape’s evolution in pre-Triassic period and follow the progress of this tiny microcosm of Australia’s landscape. Together the team developed an understanding of the significance of the beautifully-complex set of cultural and natural systems that form the unique, environmentally-rich and ancient land of the Cumberland Plains, with this shared knowledge helping imagine how Bradfield Central Park could become the heart of Australia’s newest city.

Working with the collaborator team, Arcadia designed the park to tell the ancient stories of the local Aboriginal Peoples by allowing visitors to open their spirit and mind to experience Country through all their senses. Key elements of this journey include:

Welcome Procession: Designed for the visitors arriving by Metro, a field of Themeda (kangaroo grass) bisected with a cutaway that leads into the Reflection Grounds, visitors entering Country receive a simulated experience of a Traditional Welcome and smoking ceremony, stimulating all of the senses through sights, sounds and smells.

Reflection Grounds: Envisaged as a collaboration with a local artist, the Sacred Ceremonial Ground was to be sheltered by 2000 unique hand-made coolamon forms suspended by a delicate robotically-fabricated net structure providing a celebration of Sky Country.

The Grandmother Tree: The centrepiece of the playground, the immersive Grandmother Tree shares knowledge of the cultural and natural world in a way that is interactive, inclusive, accessible, and fun for children, with an innovative sound and cinema experience that takes them from below ground, through the forest floor and up to sky country in the Eagles Nest.