This project reintroduces fragments of lost and re-imagined local buildings into both the layout of the site’s landscaping and as a number of follies located across the Print Hall and Unity Street sites. The follies will be monumental, robust, and beautifully crafted. They will suggest the past while affording imaginative and playful new ways of reading and inhabiting the public realm that will be distinctively different from most other local parks.
These proposals have evolved from detailed site and archival research and consideration of the area’s recent history in terms of use, scale and materials. In the last 100 years parts of David Street have been opened, closed, reopened and pedestrianised; Jacob Street has been cut off from Temple Way; Hawkins Street was built; and the fortunes of Old Market have declined. Much of the local area was destroyed in the Second World War, and optimistic post-war planning- in particular, the construction of the Old Market Flyover road scheme in the late 1960s- problematically reshaped local pedestrian and vehicular routes.
The site’s new public realm is intended to contribute to the regeneration of the local area. It will allow for vehicle access while prioritising pedestrian use; reconnect Jacob Street with Temple Way for pedestrians, and open up a new public park between Unity Street and Jacob Street. The materials will be appropriate for their context, and will be both robust and finely crafted in order to add detail and material richness to the area. The art commission and approach to the landscaping have been considered together, and are fully integrated.
Large-scale erasure, reconnection, rebuilding, and removal have defined this site for the last century. These designs address the implications of these radical changes- of memory and forgetting in material terms. From the intimacy of the eye-level detail to the scale of the site within its wider context, they intend to sensitively define its specific sense of place.
CLIENT: Alaska Developments
ART CONSULTANT: Ginkgo Projects
ART FABRICATOR: MDM Props
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Planit-IE
ARCHITECT: Russ Drage Architects
PRINCIPAL CONTRACTOR: Midas