A Story of Glue, Bluestone and Participation: Designing for non-typical stakeholders
In the FB IDEAs Hub Lunch & Learn session Designing for Non-typical Projects and Stakeholders, Hub Member Marina Kozul presented her work on two city-shaping projects and impressed with thoughtful design and wholehearted advocacy for ensuring children’s needs are heard in the planning of public spaces.
Learning that public squares were intentionally omitted from historic Melbourne - to prevent the public from getting together and voicing their concerns about politics, public decisions, and the direction of their city that shaped their lives - set the scene for a conversation about participation, access, and who gets to be heard.
Marina Kozul presented her work in giving a voice to those who can’t submit a proposal, formal request, or application in a public consultation process as they can’t read or write - or don’t use specialist language. Still, they know best what they need and want.
Re-evaluating the Greenline project in Melbourne CBD with Sentia Early Learning
This applies specifically for children, after all, they are the future users of our cities. Looking at the Greenline project, the local concern was that there was no playground within 2 kilometres. For a child that needs to run, climb, and jump to burn energy, this is an enormous distance - and even more so for the parents if they can’t make the journey.
To explore how children would plan the space, a board game with tokens and plans was developed. Children placed tokens where they felt elements should go, explaining their choices and telling the story about how they imagined the spaces. They learned, reconsidered, rearranged pieces, and located their kindergarten within the map - incidentally developing spatial awareness in a playful way. The clue as to how they knew how large things were on the map? Using common knowledge among kids: The proportions of animals - like rhinos, lions, and elephants.
In turning stakeholder engagement into an accessible game where a map was created from symbols, the children had the added benefit of exploring and experiencing space and distance. Taking a shortcut of 14 years of learning, the children were empowered into the position of city planners and urban designers, confidently articulating priorities and composing their dream playground. Asked about how she developed the concept, Marina said:
“I’m simply used to these design techniques, so I adapted them for the kids. It was engaging - and believe me, there was glue everywhere.”
Old Footscray Hospital - a post industrial park edevelopment
Over to a brutalist psychiatric clinic, part of the larger clinic complex now being replaced, which was built over a bluestone quarry, the very reason for its existence at the time: Bringing the treatment to the workers whose work often turned them into patients.
The challenge of this redevelopment is, as so often: How to turn an area into medium-density development without creating new issues and ideally while creating genuine likeability. In the design concept for the envisaged park, bluestone was strategically placed at the entrance, creating the effect of entering the old psychiatric yard, only to be welcomed by greenery, sports fields, and intimate gathering spots for yarning circles. These not only acknowledge the site’s deep indigenous past, long predating the bluestone quarry, but invite park dwellers to share the heritage.
An unfortunate turn revealed that the complex design, which carefully takes into account the layered complexity of the site, exceeded what the stakeholder, a key community organisation, felt able to support.
Architect and client parted, but the vision and design endure. Perhaps, at a later stage, the broader concept may find its place in the future redevelopment of the site. We, the audience of Hub members as well as playground equipment providers and city designers, look forward to it.
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