Spiire was engaged by the City of Greater Bendigo to design a temporary pop-up park in Hargreaves Mall, which was conceived as a key action in the Council’s Transforming the City Centre Action Plan.
Our design for the park softens the central section of the rectilinear, hard paved Mall, by providing organic forms, colour, texture and movement. The design is called ‘Forest in the City’, as a play on Bendigo’s designation as the ‘City in the Forest’. It incorporates organically shaped, undulating mounds that mimic hills, and advanced trees that provide a forest canopy.
Our Landscape Architecture team sought to create a fun intervention, which invited play among children and adults alike. We adopted a pop-art aesthetic which paved the way for playful and unexpected forms and colours. Play was identified as a fantastic means of achieving the City’s ambition to encourage people to stay longer; not only is play a form of dwelling in a space, it is a spectacle that creates contagious energy and vibrancy.
The City’s specific brief for the project was to provide a pop-up park with artificial turf, moveable furniture and spaces customised to events and access requirements. In response to that brief, our design created two zones within the central section of the Mall:
- The Open Lawn zone as an amphitheatre for viewing outdoor screenings and films, incorporating space for a projector screen to park, also doubling as a space for a pop-up bar or food-truck. The Open Lawn is surfaced in artificial turf and provides a flexible open space for lounging or event use.
- The Forest Zone is the iconic central zone that includes the artificial turf mounds, and sets the tone for the broader park. The Forest Zone, semi-enclosed by the mounds, evokes a strong sense of place; a lush oasis in the city. A seating bench is built into one of the mounds providing a functional place to sit during the times that the moveable furniture is packed away.
We worked closely with our client to ensure the design achieved the project’s ambitions, within constraints including careful consideration given to budget.
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