Site Office is a landscape architectural consultancy specialising in the design of pu blic spaces. Founded in 2001, it is a collaborative practice that seeks out creative partnerships with a variety of professionals, ranging from artists and furniture designers through to engineers, ecologists and horticulturists. Site Office brings a strong research and technical agenda to each project we undertake, reflective of our interest in developing fields of knowledge.  We have a strong emphasis on effective communication of ideas, particularly to the community and user groups.  We place great emphasis on detail and presentation, and utilize a range of technologies to best understand and explain ideas and information. Most importantly, we have a commitment to producing innovative work of the highest quality that fulfils the requirements of the project brief, as well as contributes to the greater discourse of landscape architecture and design.

Merit Award in Design, AILA Victorian Chapter, 2007
Future Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne

Commendation Award in Design, AILA Victorian Chapter, 2007
Raglan Street Parkland, Port Melbourne, City of Port Phillip

Premier’ Design Awards, Shortlisted entry, 2006
Diversity Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne

Chairman’s Premier Award, Architectural Excellence in the South East Awards, 2006
Future Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne

Best Environmental Building or Landscape, Architectural Excellence in the South East Awards, 2006
Future Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne

Parkland Design Award, Parks and Leisure Australia (National Award), 2005
Keast Park Master Plan, City of Frankston

Commendation Award in Design, AILA Victorian Chapter, 2004
Mount Street, Heidelberg, City of Banyule

Merit Award in Planning, Keast Park Master Plan, AILA Victorian Chapter, 2004
Keast Park Master Plan, City of Frankston

Open Space Management Award , Parks and Leisure Australia Victorian Chapter, 2004
Keast Park Master Plan, City of Frankston

Merit Award, Urban Masterplans, AILA Victorian Chapter, 2002
Mount Evelyn Urban Design Framework, Shire of Yarra Ranges

PUBLICATIONS BY:

‘Public Space : Is Good’, in Review 05, Queensland University of Technology, 2006, pp 23-30

‘Useless Landscapes’ in Architectural Review, No. 95, December 2005, pp 66-67

‘Territorial Infrastructure’, in The Mesh Book – Landscape / Infrastructure, Edited by Raxworthy & Blood, RMIT University Press, Melbourne, 2004

‘Rising Damp’, in Kerb – Journal of Landscape Architecture, Issue No.12, November 2003

‘Bed of Salt’, in Architectural Review, No. 081, September 2002, pp 16-17

‘Landscape as Text(ure)’, in Kerb – Journal of Landscape Architecture, Issue 10, December 2001

‘Embodied Infrastructure – The economics of composite urban structures’, Mesh Conference Proceedings, December 2001

‘The topological twist in landscape architecture’ in Kerb – Journal of Landscape Architecture, Issue 06, April 2000

‘Black Stump ; Landscape, Aboriginality & Disclosure’, in Architecture Australia, January 1998, volume 87, no.1, pg 72-75

‘Representing Landscapes Digitally’, in Landscape Australia, pg 34-39, May 1998

PUBLICATIONS ABOUT:

‘RSPCA’, Review by Peter Bickle, in Architecture Australia, 2008.

‘Dryness’, J. Raxworthy, in Scape International Journal of Landscape Architecture, 2008.

‘Raglan Street Parkland’, Review by Dimity Reed, in Landscape Architecture Australia, February 2008, pg 58-61

‘A New Formalism’, Catherine Bull, in Landscape Architecture Australia, August 2006, pg 40,43

‘Peninsular Garden’, Belle, December / January 2006/07, pg 111-117

‘Making Connections’, Review by Richard Holt in Architectural Review, No. 95, December 2005, pp 98-101

‘Courtyard Garden’, in Inside Out, October 2002, pg 114-119

Design Competition for a Pubic Place, Edited by Stephen Frith, National Capital Authority, Canberra, 2001, pg 54

Address: level 5 165 flinders lane melbourne vic 3000 australia

Telephone: phone 03 9639 0391 fax 03 9639 0595

Email: General Inquiries admin@siteoffice.com.au

Mount Street Park, Heidelberg, Banyule City Council, 2002/03

Site Office completed the design and installation of this VicHealth sponsored project to enhance a small park in front of Heidelberg Station. The purpose of the project was to improve the park through the design of art and landscape works that reflect the local character of the area and engage with this community.  A low, sinuous concrete seating wall wraps its way around the park, in between existing mature trees.  Embedded within the wall are a series of led message boards that include oral histories, poems and prose. The messages scroll through the park, providing movement and animation to the space at night. This project recieved a Commendation Award in Design at the 2004 AILA Victorian Chapter Awards.

Photography :Trevor Mein

Raglan Street Parkland, Port Melbourne, City of Port Phillip, 2005-7

Located on the Ingles Street truck route, Site Office has designed a small park that incorporates an acoustic noise wall, shade structure and furniture elements.  The purpose of commission was to create a neighbourhood park with high amenity, while being shielded from the visual and acoustic pollution generated by adjacent truck route.  A timber noise wall weaves along one edge of the site, responding to the dynamic movement of the traffic, while protecting indigenous plantings on the other side.  The project recieved a Commendation Award in Design at the 2007 AILA Victorian Chapter Awards.

Photography : Ben Wrigley

Future Garden - A Garden of Dilemmas, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, 2005

The history of horticulture is characterised by the continual investigation into the artificial manipulation of plants. Techniques such as cultivars, grafting, hybrids and plant genomics all seek to alter the naturally occurring form of a plant in some fundamental, synthetic way. In Australia, there are now many varieties of native plants that have undergone different levels of manipulation, resulting in ‘native’ plants never actually found in the wild. Yet such manipulation is also fraught with moral dilemmas, representing both the possibility of enormous advancement and the fear of irreversible genetic pollution and loss of plant provenance. The Future Garden is an exploration of the reality and dilemmas posed by this investigation into synthetic plant production, dispelling the notion of ‘bush’ garden. It becomes a synthetic, cellular landscape comprising of Australian plants that are the direct result of science not nature. This project recieved a Merit Award in Design at the 2007AILA Victorian Chapter Awards.

 

Diversity Garden - A Botanical Transect, Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, 2005

Historically, white Australians have tended to characterise the land as empty rather than full. Yet, interestingly, we have some of the most botanically diverse areas on the entire planet. This diversity is largely based on the ancient, nutrient deficient soils which have forced plants to become highly specialised, forging tight symbiotic relationships with surrounding plants, fauna and terrain. The Diversity Garden is a botanical transect through the 85 bioregions of Australia, representing the enormous diversity of geography, climate, flora and fauna. Each bioregion is defined by a thin strip of material composed from plant and mineral matter representative of that bioregion. The garden draws attention to notions of native and indigenous plants, making important connections between plant type and geographic origin. This project was shortlisted for the 2006 Premier's Design Awards.

 

St Kilda Foreshore Promenade, City of Port Phillip, 2004 onwards

Site Office and Jackson Clements Burrows have redesigned 700 metres of the main promenade along the St Kilda foreshore from St Kilda Pier down to Brookes Jetty.  The design involves the widening and topographic articulation of the edge of the promenade to encourage a greater range of uses to occur along the foreshore promenade.  This project is currently under construction and due to be completed in 2008.

Britannia Mall, City of Whitehorse, 2005

Site Office has recently completed a major upgrade to this external shopping mall in Mitcham.  The design consisted of replacing the central brick paved portion of the mall with a series of floating timber seating deck modules.  The floating decks allow for greater water permeability, encouraging vastly improved growing conditions for the existing under performing trees situated in the mall.

Photography : Ben Wrigley

Keast Park Master Plan, Seaford, City of Frankston, 2003/04

Site Office completed a comprehensive master plan for Keast Park, a 2.5 hectare public park situated at the northern end of the Seaford foreshore on Port Phillip Bay. The project explored creative ways to synthesize the underlying ecology of the sensitive foreshore environment with the functional requirements of the public park, in particular the need to accommodate a broad range of functions, including the Carrum Bowls Club, the sea scouts, public toilets and change facilities, a multi-purpose community space and a small café. This project recieved a Merit Award in Planning, at the 2004 AILA Victorian Chapter Awards.

 

Monte Carlo Reserve Master Plan, Avondale Heights, City of Moonee Valley, 2007-8

Site Office has recently completed a comprehensive master plan for this suburban park located on the junction between the ancient basalt Keilor Plains and the deeply eroded Maribyrnong River basin in Avondale Heights. The primary experience of the park remains a direct and enduring result of the evolution of the site, as rain water slowly carved out the gully from plateau to river. The master plan explores ways of representing the presence of the ephemeral water course that formerly traversed the site (but was filled in during the subdivision of the park and adjacent properties in the early 1980s). The design of the park explores ways of recreating this texture and experience not by mimicking natural processes, but through a careful understanding of how people experience and interact with the site and the elements.

RSPCA Headquarters, Burwood, 2005/7

In 2005 the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals embarked on a $10 million redevelopment of their headquarters in Burwood.  Since then, Site Office working in conjunction with NH Architecture, have been working on the landscape design for the project, developing a landscape that is a physical expression of the goals of the RSPCA and the positive relationship between humans and animals. The landscape is both highly symbolic (in what it says about our relationship with animals), as well as highly experiential (in how animals and humans interact bodily with their environment). This project won an Architecture Award in the Sustainable Architecture category at the 2008 RAIA Victorian Architecture Awards.

Photography : Peter Bennetts, Site Office

 

Wantirna Mall, City of Knox, 2008

Site Office was receently asked to prepare concept design ideas for this outer suburban shopping strip. Work in progress.