This project proposes the daylighting of multiple tributaries of the Duck River catchment in the suburb of Auburn in Western Sydney. Daylighting, a form of naturalised infrastructure where buried stormwater pipes are brought to the surface to implement natural streams, offers multiple benefits over pipes, including restored habitats, enhanced stormwater management, and a natural asset for the community to enjoy. Since colonial settlement, the Duck River corridor has suffered fragmentation and degradation. This strategy aims to restore environmental, recreational, scenic, cultural and social values, and address key management issues such as conservation, access and public engagement. It introduces a series of cycleways and walking paths along the restored waterways, and includes a number of interpretive re-adaptations of post-industrial infrastructure to engage the diverse contemporary inhabitants of Auburn with Indigenous, environmental and industrial histories of the site, and to begin the construction of a new eco-cosmopolitan future.
In this studio, students explored landscape design solutions in a contested urban site framed by an exploration and application of landscape and urban theory, method and precedent. The studio was framed around the notion of cities as ‘entrepots’ – a word typically used to refer to centres of trade through which goods pass on their journeys around the world. This studio took a broad view of the concept of the entrepot in the context of current global systems, considering the impact of the flows, not just of goods, but people, information, capital, energy, water, and other organic and inorganic materials.
