Trailfinders Australian Garden turned out to be a winner at the famous Chelsea Flower Show in the UK, its blend of architecture and nature helping it along to be awarded the Silver-Gilt Award.
The Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show has become the most famous gardening show in the world and an important venue for watching emerging gardening trends. It runs forfive days each May and is attended by over 157,000 visitors each year.
The all-Australian display was a popular feature in 2011.
The Trailfinders Australian Garden presented by Flemings, Ian Barker Designs, was a joint collaboration between Ian Baker and the MakMax design team.
Designed and made in Australia, a the built feature was the fabric structure, inspired by botanist Sir Joseph Banks and the First Fleet to Australia.
Landscape designer Ian Barker spent two years in the planning.
“My design brief endeavoured to combine the spirit of adventure that is synonymous with the Trailfinders ethos with a celebration of the global horticultural industry,” Barker said.
“The final structure that was produced completely encapsulated Sir Joseph Bank’s passion for horticulture and presented it in a contemporary style, punctuated with the inclusion of MakMax’s symbolic designs.”
MakMax Managing Director Bernie Neylan said: “To bring the design to life, our engineers creatively used two common materials — PVC and lycra — in an uncommon fashion, creating a spectacular reflected lighting effect.
“The outer PVC layer contained ports to allow streams of natural light through, which were then projected onto the inner layer of lycra fabric to create a stunning light pattern that changed continually with the position of the sun.
“Importantly, our engineers ensured accurate geometry was used throughout so that the model could be separated into the individual sections that could be unified in the manufacturing and fabrication process, creating the desired architectural aesthetic.”
