In 1997 Tony McCormick of Hassell, an architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture firm in Sydney, invited PWP to lead in the design of a park of more than a thousand acres. Surrounding the 2000 Sydney Olympics at Homebush Bay, the site is slightly larger than New York City's Central Park, but unlike Central Park or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, it does not lie within an urban grid and therefore has no formal boundaries. Rather, various state, federal, and city parcels, including Bicentennial Park (recently built over a garbage landfill), have been cobbled together. Hence the name "Millennium Parklands." These parcels may be extended over time, perhaps with additional lands across the Parramatta River and Homebush Bay.   Most of the Olympic and Parklands sites had been generally degraded, first by their use as an abattoir in the nineteenth century and then by chemical and heavy-manufacturing facilities in the twentieth. More than sixty-five percent of the site was saturated to some degree with chemical waste, which had to be dug out before the site could be planted or used for recreational purposes. One of the historic stream basins had been totally filled with degraded soil, destroying its natural flow and ecology. Specific legislation dictated that these toxic excavations could not be removed from the site. Additionally, a portion of the site was a storehouse for naval munitions, some of which were buried underground and are possibly still present in the adjacent marshes. The Olympic site occupied most of the higher ground, leaving the lower and most degraded areas within the Parklands site.   Nevertheless, the Parklands site possessed some remarkable assets: more than fifteen miles of continuous waterfront along the Parramatta River and Homebush Bay; a naval base with a truly remarkable man-made landscape and a number of historic buildings, dating back more than a century; an almost unspoiled 124-acre aboriginal forest; substantial areas of mangrove swamp in the major inlets and river edge, some of which have been developed and maintained by Bicen-tennial Park as a nature preserve; bird sanctuaries in the mangrove stands; a rare species of Golden Orb spiders; and Green and Golden Bell frogs, an endangered species. The Brick Pit is composed of some seventy acres of deep excavated layers of shale with a limestone quarry below, a reminder of the historic development of Sydney, a beautiful spatial feature of the site, and along with residual wet surrounds a major new habitat for the endangered frogs.   The park board and the Olympic Coordinating Authority (OCA) have envisioned a park for the twenty-first century that contrasts sharply with such nineteenth-century creations as Sydney's Centennial Park. The strategy for the development of the Parklands in the 1997 study breaks down into ten main tasks.   The first was to dig out the contaminated soil and place it in a series of positive landforms; some of these were small hills that were naturalistic in character, and some took the form of ziggurats, which were called markers. Spiraling paths lead to the tops of the markers, which range from twenty to sixty meters in height and serve as orientation monuments from various parts of the park while providng views over trees to the Olympic Center, the river and bay, and in the distance to the skyscrapers of downtown Sydney. Since the earth caps of both sorts of landforms were thin, tree planting was kept to the deeper soil at their lower edges and shallow-rooted native grasses were sowed on the thin caps.   Second, Haslam's Creek was completely restored into a seemingly naturalistic streambed leading down through the park to the Parramatta River. Designed pools on either side harvest the fresh-water run-off for irrigation and naturally purify the water before discharge into the river. The whole area was replanted as a major riparian wetland with a variety of grasses, reeds, and submersible plants.   Third, the plan calls for an extensive linear reforestation around each of the parkland parcels in order to form continuous walls that separate each of the different functions of the park into great rooms. Within the forested walls, a system of separate linear paths--"green tubes" for walking, bicycling, and jogging--will connect all of the rooms in the park like hallways in a gigantic house.   Fourth, the surreal lawn of the naval base with its underground bunkers and the aboriginal forest area will be preserved with restoration of the historic naval buildings and repair and extension of a small electric train to provide visual access to the fragile forest and a popular ride for visitors of the park.   Fifth, the mangrove swamps will be permitted to reestablish themselves from Bicentennial Park all along the river, doubling the bird and insect habitat.   Sixth, a continuous lighted boardwalk and bicycle promenade will stretch the full length of the river and bay frontage. This promenade will be connected to the systems of park paths and biking trails.   Seventh, the Brick Pit will be preserved intact as a habitat and as a historical monument except for construction of safe access for small groups of school children and park visitors.   Eight, the huge central surface-parking lot will be replanted and partially developed as a park arrival and service village that will provide information as well as the beginning point for train, jitney, bicycle, and pedestrian ways.   Ninth, the existing automobile boulevards will be replanted with additional forest walls and redesigned with a limited amount of short-term roadside parking for the convenience of picnicking families and disabled visitors.   Finally, the plan calls for the formation of a governing institute to help guide the development of the Parklands and its evolving program. Not unlike a small university, the institute will blend scientific nature study, cultural and natural history, and site-specific arts with scholar- and artist-in-residence programs, educational and outreach programs, and a program of exhibitions, festivals, and commemorations to expand the public activities of the annual Easter Show throughout the year. The institute will utilize the state-of-the-art information systems that were developed for the 2000 Olympics.   Most of the Parklands are designed to be dry and self-sustaining, although over time there can be a certain amount of green lawn for traditional park activities. Conventional athletic activities, such as tennis, golf, swimming, and organized field games, would make use of the existing Olympic facilities.   The plan has been adopted, and PWP is serving as continuing planning and design consultant to the park staff.

 

PWP Home  >  Projects  >  Public & Private Parks  >  Millennium Parklands - Sydney 2000 Olympic Games