2021 Brian Patrick Keirnan Prize
2021 WINNING PROPOSAL
Ryan Dingle | Framing Country
The jury was sensitive to the proposal which invites the viewer into a personal journey through a landscape of memory re-interpreting Sydney’s pre-colonial ecology.
Repurposing a disused railway tunnel underneath Hyde Park into an intense experiential passage, taking visitors from the city to the Botanic Garden, the project cleverly blurs the threshold between spectral urban ruins and picturesque nature. The abandoned infrastructure revives as a dense atmospheric pipeline fluctuating between bright outdoor space and dark confined tunnels resolving in a vision of uncanny beauty at times reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky’s imagery.
The monolithic architecture guides us through a series of sensorial settings following a tragic narrative of loss.
The minimal design interventions are sequenced in a collection of compelling vignettes somber yet oneiric in appearance conveying an atmosphere that encourages reveries and personal introspection.
As a transitable archive of topographical flashbacks -using architecture as scaphandre- the proposal ignites an exciting prospect embodying the spirit of the student awards: an intriguing excavation, an apneic dive into the unknown where “gravity intensifies, rounded edges become sharp, enclosing mass becomes cavernous with the sky being viewed through a stone frame”
2021 BRIAN PATRICK KEIRNAN PRIZE COMMENDATION
Lucy Sharman | Generation
‘Generation’ by Lucy Sharman boldly reimagines the approach to the pressing issues of an ageing population, a lack of affordable student accommodation and the social isolation which generally flows from existing design approaches. ‘Generation’ delivers an instructive response to these problems, breaking down imagined barriers between generations and delivering a design solution borne from a recognition of the commonality of experience of younger and ageing generations.
The reinvention of what to date has generally been a stagnant design outcome for aged housing, provides an exciting path to address social isolation and affordability of housing– generating improved social outcomes through a dynamic response to public and private space.
2021 BRIAN PATRICK KEIRNAN PRIZE COMMENDATION
Chloe Goldsmith and Callum Coombe | Tributary Park
‘Tributary Park’ by Chloe Callum and Callum Coombe is a project that proposes the ‘undoing’ in part of a colonial overlay of ovals and structures in Newcastle CBD to enable the transformation of space into the pre-colonial wetlands that originated on the site.
Remnants or relics are repurposed and the natural rhythm of the tides drives
the renewal of the land as it recreates the ecosystem of the salt marsh. The
jury were impressed by the depth of research and overall concept as both an answer to the ever-increasing threat of flooding within the Newcastle area and the regeneration of original systems of water management, tidal salt marshes and wetland habitats for threatened species within our urban centres.
