by Dr Helen Whitbread
Landscape Architecture Australia
No. 131, August 2011
pp. 62-66
The Lakeway Redevelopment in the Perth suburb of Claremont sees a former drive-in theatre transformed into a 39 lot residential estate. Key to the success of the project has been the retention of existing bushland and parkland, and the integration of remnant elements and artworks to provide historical narratives of the site.
The project has been featured in the August 2011 issue of Landscape Architecture Australia. The article, written by Dr Helen Whitbread, associate director of the Built Environment at the University of Western Australia, describes the project as "a good example of landscape architecture that demonstrates confidence in syntax and a resistance to unconscious design."
She alludes to the writings of the late George Seddon, specifically his Sense of Place, which entreated "landscape architects to capture the genius loci of a place by following a design manifesto that was strongly embedded in re-creating the natural landscape rather than importing an artificial aesthetic." The Lakeway Redevelopment achieves this and the outcome was strongly influenced by a synthesis of site and culture. The project's principal landscape architect Carl Thomson "used a range of strategies," including community consultation, "to achieve a design that is quietly confident, creating both a landscape thread and a community landscape."
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