The ACT Chapter of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects has announced the winners list of the 2022 Landscape Architecture Awards in its entirety, celebrating projects with a key focus on urban greening and community engagement.
13 project submissions were entered, with exciting submissions spanning across categories such as Civic Landscape, Urban Design, Landscape Planning and Community Contribution.
Across the submissions, the ACT Jury were impressed to see a focus on the renewal and renovation of many Canberra-based parks and landscapes. They highlighted the community and civic nature of landscape architects across the state.
The awards run every two years, with 13 projects submitted and ten of them celebrated for their outstanding and positive contributions to Australian Capital Territory’s landscape architecture industry.
The entries included the creation of pollinator-friendly habitats, the reimagining of a traditional cemetery, and the revitalisation of an urban space, designed for social connection.
AILA ACT 2022 Awards Jury Chair Julian Raxworthy says Canberra has landscape architecture in its DNA, with the profession founded within the state. Raxworthy says the city’s urban form has been shaped by landscape architects over the last 100 years.
“With such a rich history in landscape architecture, it is unsurprising that the winning projects in this year’s Australian Institute of Landscape Architects ACT Chapter Awards were concerned with tweaking, upgrading, or adding new layers to existing landscape architecture projects in Canberra,” he says.
Canberra’s popular City Park Walk (pictured top) by the City Renewal Authority received the Landscape Architecture Award, recognising the reinvigoration of the space, and a unique approach to create different layers of use.
“The enhancements at City Park Walk are particularly wonderful in the way it offers visitors a variety of spaces and places in which they can congregate and gather, from a large formal expanse of grass dotted with seating to more intimate spaces incorporating raised garden beds and diverse planting, which prodigy welcome relief from an otherwise hard-scaped and heat island-affected urban setting,” Raxworthy says.
Place Laboratory and PCL's Southern Memorial Park (pictured above) has also been acknowledged with an Award of Excellence for the reimagining of a traditional cemetery through unique landscape interventions and a focus on sustainability principles.
“The project demonstrates a great depth of thinking in terms of how the internment precincts have been configured, with careful consideration for a landscape setting designed to offer space for reflection and bereavement,” Raxworthy says.
The full list of award winners can be viewed here.
