An Intergrated City. Concept Statment.
Our city should become an integral and important part of the Sydney landscape, folding seamlessly into the surrounding suburbs and connecting back to the Sydney CBD. Nature will play an integral role in this city, establishing a peaceful and harmonious environment, and also a format for the built parts of the city to follow; creating a single unique aesthetic that gives a holistic feel. Our buildings will not encroach, but compliment and extend the natural beauty of the landscape; they will be covered in green spaces, and once again, inspired by forms found in nature. Culture will play an important role in our city as well, holding a theatre area and performance space, as well as a museum and outdoor amphitheatre. Our city will provide housing for well over 20 000 people, with a variety of housing types to suit different demographics; free standing houses, apartments and terraces, and well as high-rise mixed-use buildings in the city centre that combine commercial and residential functions. Schools, hospitals, as well as business and retail spaces will be integrated throughout the entire city, rather than split into separate districts, in an attempt to provide a sense of unity and cohesiveness. The city will include farm land on its outer edges, urban farms closer to the centre, and water turbines under the water table, in order to localise the production of food, resources, and energy, in a desire for a self sustaining city. The Leaf is an important facet of our design; the city structure stemming from a native plant called the Kidney weed, which has informed the vein structures of the roads, as well as the shapes and aesthetics of the buildings themselves. This tiny plant will grow throughout the city, thereby bringing the concept in a full circle. A hyper efficient light rail system will run quietly on grass-lined tracks, and bike lanes will weave throughout the streets, almost completely eliminating the need for cars in a desire to reduce the noise of the city and limit pollution. All these elements will combine into a harmonious and beautiful whole to create a sustainable, unified, natural city.
Rebecca Wichkham, Lauren Scarcella and Simon Swadling
The inspiration for our cultural centre came from collecting drying leaves that curl into pleasing organic shapes, one half of the building left open to become an outdoor perfromace space, the other half becomes a museum, clad in copper that will tarnish and blend with the surrouding landscape over time.
The Teraced houses were grouped into little communities around public gardens, with corner stores, grassed roofs and large skylights to make the houses feel open but still private.
