Post-Industrial Parks

Ballast Point Park

Built: 2009

The restoration of Ballast Point to a new public harbour-side park, reveals and draws interest from the site's history by retaining the cliff faces where ballast was once quarried by the early settlers, as well as retaining the footprints of the storage drums which previously occupied the site. The restoration of the point included a decontamination of the old industrial facilities and the creation of new wetland areas to filter the site's stormwater before it enters the harbour. The park challenges the potential for using recycled materials to create high-end products and reduce the draw-down on new raw materials. Retaining walls were built from recycled site demolition materials, all concrete used was a recycled mix. All timbers, aggregate, soil and mulch are recycled. This composition of recycled materials is held together by an astute attention to detail which elevates it above the pragmatic to the unique.

Paddington Reservoir Gardens

Built: 2009

Paddington Reservoir Gardens began as a water storage space for the early Sydney colony in 1866. This intended usage did not last long as Sydney's population rapidly expanded beyond the Reservoir's water carrying capacity. This project sought to subtly foster and maintain the strange atmosphere found in the subterranean structure, converting the disused reservoir into an urban garden. A sunken garden occupies the two western chambers of the reservoir. One inaccessible planted with a palette of highly textured plants reminiscent of a Victorian era planting, the other slightly raised and planted with a single gum tree in a lawn. At the centre of these two gardens, under a remnant piece of vaulted roof, a dark pond reflects all.

Urban Outfitters Headquarters

Built: 2005-2011

Respect for rich histories of the Navy Yard guides the design of a refashioned campus of creativity for retailer Urban Outfitters (URBN). An industrial strength landscape armature structures the retrofit of massive manufacturing buildings into design studios and corporate offices, forming URBN's campus, and community, of creativity. Rebranded demolition debris is lovingly converted into patterns of porous pavement. Tapestries of hedgerows and drifts of wild wooly grasses and wildflowers emulate URBN's sensibility for the next evolution of this productive landscape. On the civic axis to the Delaware River, URBN's private venture becomes an extension of the public realm of Philadelphia and a poster child for future industrial redevelopment.

Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord

Built: 2002

In the Landscape Park Duisburg Nord extending over an area of about 180 hectares, nature, industrial heritage and a fascinating light installation combine to create a park landscape unlike any other in the world. At the centre stands a disused ironworks whose old industrial facilities have today been put to a wide variety of uses. The huge buildings of the former ironworks have been equipped to cater for cultural and corporate functions; in an old gasometer Europe's biggest man-made diving centre has been created; alpine climbing gardens have been created in ore storage bunkers; in a former casting house a high ropes course has been set up; and an extinguished blast furnace has been modified to provide a viewing tower.

Hart's Mill

Built: 2014

Urban renewals play a significant role in a city's urban fabric and planning, and can take on many shapes and forms. The Hart's Mill Project is one such project pivotal to the urban regeneration program for Port Adelaide. The new space includes extensive new grassed recreation areas with trees, picnic and BBQ areas as well as multifunctional spaces for events and markets. An innovative new play space themed around the site's flour milling history is a key feature of the site. Its design draws on references of the numerous port trade activities in the wharf precinct. The adaptive re-use design approach included retaining the existing rail line in its original state to maintain a reference to the port's history and role as an export hub. It is flanked by raised green platforms designed as vessels containing new park spaces within what is a highly modified and contaminated site that has been cleaned up.

The Steel Yard

Built: 2011

Most cities with industrial pasts inherit problematic environmental futures. The Steel Yard's cleanup of a former brownfield site is a showcase for regenerative design in a tough environment. Within industrial Providence, the project is a public intervention that upends commonly held notions of blighted neighborhoods and shows the potential for real, actively engaged—not simply 'adaptive'—re-use. The Steel Yard's landscape features innovative (and necessarily inexpensive) brownfield remediation, stormwater filtration/reduction, purposeful design and placemaking. Competing interests of large paved surfaces for outdoor work space, events, and vehicular movement, balanced with the sustainable interests of reducing impervious pavement, are driving forces of the landscape design. The resulting design is centered on a paved plane, 'the carpet,' which is woven with heavy- and light-duty pavements, impermeable and pervious materials.