Landscape Infrastructure in Sydney: Exemplars of Landscape Synergies and Capacity by Design

Abstract

The landscape architecture undergraduate programme at the University of
Technology Sydney introduced landscape infrastructure as a subject into its
curriculum in 2016. This subject contained two aims relating to the application
of landscape infrastructure to an Australian context, extending beyond its North
American origins. First, it aimed to identify and test the principles of landscape
infrastructure that could be ‘generalisable’ and that exist outside of site specifics
or a particular context. Second, it sought novel instances of its application in the
Sydney region. Principles were distilled through an evaluation of relevant literature and were then tested through two exercises.
The first required students to reimagine The GreenWay, a multifunctional
landscape corridor in Sydney’s Inner West and part of a proposed metropolitanwide Green Grid network. Students then applied the framework of landscape infrastructure through design proposals in one of Australia’s fastest-growing urban centres, Parramatta. The findings of this research distilled and clarified the definition of landscape infrastructure; demonstrated the inherent capacity of landscape to act as the conduit for multifunctional, flexible, localised and synergistic infrastructural systems; and highlighted its potential for application in an Australian context. This work supports landscape infrastructure’s position to move beyond the integration of infrastructure within landscape and instead proposes that landscape itself is infrastructural.