Project Description
Sedimentary City :Kurilpa Creek Watershed

The project is to develop a proposition for the Sedimentary City for Brisbane.
The proposal is to include an exploration of the significance of landscape in establishing qualities that can be brought to the physical environment for the enhancement of city life.
The new physical context is to be revealed as drawing on elements from the past and the present as integral to speculating on the future – offering temporal continuum.
The project also anticipates an architecture designed in relation to the landscape and the city whilst also proposing a city that is not merely of the “General Plan” type but is designed “point by point”. (see “Ten Points for an Urban Methodology”).

Urban manifesto
Oriol Bohigas defines the city as the sum of distinct identifiable neighbourhoods each with public places where individuals “together make up a community”. He argues that public community places that ‘enrich conflicts’, through resolution, by including ‘differences’, ‘tensions’, ‘centralities’ and ‘chance’, can enhance the exchange of ideas and information – rather than dissipating these by planned separation and homogenization. The spaces of the ‘collective life’ of a neighbourhood gains identity not only from the forms, functions and images of the landscape and the city but also from ‘the identity of each fragment of the urban space’ and its design. Nested within the greater neighbourhood are enclaves often identified with public places such as the “street, the square, the garden, the monument, the city block, etc”. For the public places to be legible, and in support of collective life, their form, function, image etc have to be comprehensible and communicate what they are and what can take place there. What are the dimensions, hierarchy, location, character etc. that underpin the public places of the street, square and city block etc so that they support a collective life? Bohigas claims that “(N) no urbanistic proposal will make any kind of sense if it does not rest on architectural quality”, in the sense of both ‘service’ and ‘prophecy’, and concludes his manifesto with “the city must be an architectural project,” and that a solution for architecture is to design it as part of the city.

Brisbane
The forecast doubling of the population in Brisbane within the next twenty-thirty years (and ongoing) also heralds change for the physical city and its neighbourhoods. The challenge of planning for growth will be intensified by adapting to pressure on resources including fresh food, water and fuels that may require rethinking mobility, transportation, proximity to services central to planning and designing human settlements.
Defining the city neighbourhood of South Brisbane - West End presents an opportunity to explore Bohigas’ urban methodology as an alternative to the local authority planning.
North Brisbane CBD, as a primary central business district, limits its potential to provide public spaces to support the collective life of the community as experienced in cities such as Barcelona.
In South Brisbane-West End Vulture Street may form the civic ‘spine’ linking the former South Brisbane Town Hall with the Davies Park at the Brisbane River and is crossed by streets such as Boundary Street and Montague Road that link to adjacent river pockets.
With ongoing population growth and its increasing demands not only for housing but also for more open space and public services comes the pressure on other resources and most essentially food and drinking water. Simultaneously, increases in temperature and flooding from higher sea levels are reportedly the result of both natural climate cycles together with human degradation of the environment; factors that will also contribute to more severe weather patterns. It is against this complex background that the program is introduced.

Proposition
The aim is to develop a proposition for the Sedimentary City for Brisbane.
The proposition is to include an exploration of the significance of the landscape in establishing qualities that can be brought to the physical environment to enhance city life.
The physical context is also to be revealed as drawing on elements from the past and as speculating on future environments.
Register: South Brisbane/West End
First City and Intermediate City layers offer potentially significant landscape elements, ‘land-marks’ and public spaces found in the environment (and the culture and technology of the city) that may be drawn into the planning/design of the neighbourhood together with the manifesto and forecasts above.
Devise a proposition at the scale of the neighbourhood as a general plan, a scheme of intentions and identify qualities and places of ‘tension’ promoting chance and exchange that can inform architecture of the city and landscape.

Register: Montague Road
Sedimentary City is comprised of many areas including The Greater Kurilpa Area of the First City. Draw its significant landscape, culture and technology elements public spaces for community into the design mix and ‘problematize’ the issues it raises together with relevant points of the manifesto.
Devise a proposition and a plan for the next layer.

Register: Creek outlet
The Kuripla’s landscape, adjacent to the river’s west bank, was/is a fertile place with a once abundant food source defining the general location for a proposed future Water Exchange and Food Exchange as well as a place for Sedimentary City Research Centre and micro-housing.
Locate place with the creek outlet between Montague Road and the Brisbane River for the architectural project. Test viability through sectional /plan drawings 1:500 scale, figure ground diagrams and axonometric volumetric studies. Devise a proposition and a plan for the next layer.