Landscape Architecture Masters Project: CoLab

Major Project, Masters in Landscape Architecture

CoLAB: An extended Ecological Collaboration and Practice Reuben Hore-Waterhouse

Economy

Water Current

Wind

Geology Dredger

Edge Conditions Recreation

Wind / Water Current

Tide

Port Phillip

Vegetation Habitat

Current professions and practices, even those outside of the landscape architecture profession, tend to be subdued by boundaries, territories, sites and extent of works. These restraints define what we do, how we act, how our work is undertaken and who we are required to communicate with.

However, the theory of ecology promotes something entirely different. We do not live in a world that works by dividing and categorising; wind, water, currency, people, species, economic growth and so on ignore boundaries, operating outside of the gurative line or fence we place on the landscape. Instead, the landscape is built up of close relationships that are intrinsically linked together - altering one may have drastic carry-on effects for the landscape’s ecological chain. Ecology asserts that we need to bridge this divide, acknowledging and involving those who are traditionally considered outside of the idea of ‘works’ or ‘site’ and considering the potential effects an event might have on a wider ecological system.

CoLAB aims to emphasise those who are responsible for the key physical control points of systemic change, as well as to extend to those who have been and will be effected by these points of change across the landscape. Specifically, CoLAB considers the proposed Parks Victoria Dredging Maintenance Program within Port Phillip Bay Victoria, and its potential to transport sediment through bay currents to extended coastal council stakeholders, here the Bayside City Council, and many more stakeholders across the bay.

The Lab simulation allows these voices to be heard; extended stakeholders can gather, create conversation, simulate dredge material upon site and test and record new coastal management schemes and structures that respond to the increase in sediment pollution on the coastline, thus creating new desired outcomes. These new coastal Management Structures can be programable, used as seats tables, shelters and viewing platforms. Unlike existing coastal management structures such as groynes, breakwaters and revetments that sit stagnant and non responsive, these can be moved, rotated and extracted, curating and accumulating sediment to generate land. This process in turn allows a more dynamic response to changing conditions to curate and promote the emergence of new coastal ecologies.

CoLAB not only acknowledges these actions on a larger scale, and extends the agency to collaboratively include those that may be effected by an event, but develops a new responsive and dynamic way of practice by managing coastal environments through the Lab and the generation of new management tools.

By extending this agency radius, we may acknowledge our actions on a much larger scale and start to think of our landscape as a collaborative one; our actions do have consequences, actions that may burrow deep into the ecological chain and effect many more things than the line we draw with a stick in the dirt and call ‘site’. By understanding this, we - anyone who has the potential to make a mark on the canvas of the landscape - might hopefully recognise landscape as a series of close-knit relationships, inputs and outputs that we can engage with and be apart of.

-144° f,10

The Laboratory

Collaborative Laboratory

L

-144째

-76째 f,10

g,5

f,7

f,9 -112째

Lab Collaboration and Scripted Recordings

Collaborative Process

4째

M

Emergence of New Ecologies Testing and Understanding Growth in Relation to Sediment Formation

By understanding the behavioural profile of common coastal vegetation species, we can then start to predict how the formation of sediment might promote various natural growths and how it might shift and change over time.

Reuben Hore-Waterhouse Graduate of Masters of Landscape Architecture reuben.horewaterhouse@gmail.com

132