A new park on Sydney’s former Water Police site reconnects the area to the waterfront.
August 2nd, 2010
Harris Street, Pyrmont is now reconnected with the waterfront for the first time in over a hundred years.
Pirrama Park, with its dramatic corner café and waterside plaza, anchors the street to Elizabeth Macarthur Bay, replacing various industrial uses that previously dominated the site and made it inaccessible to the public.
ASPECT Studios together with Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects and CAB Consulting prepared the master plan and design for the City of Sydney Council.
The design teams were faced with a vast, concrete platform and wharves remaining from the activities of the site’s former occupant, the Water Police.
The opportunity to reconnect Harris Street with the harbour was a unanimous response to the site by the design teams.
This opportunity was developed through three design principles: the flexible park, the richness and variety of the park experience, and engaging with water.
ASPECT coordinated the park’s design with Hill Thalis focusing on the architectural elements of the project.
Essentially, the park’s form is focused on two spines – a water promenade defined by an edge suggestive of the former shoreline, and Harris Street, which is terminated by the plaza, canopy and belvedere.
The multi-purpose park spine runs north-south through the site and is formed from a walkway, a low, straight retaining wall edged with a parallel planting bed and irregular concrete walls reminiscent of the former shoreline.
As with many elements of the site, the retaining wall integrates multiple functions.
There are several water rooms on the harbour side of the wall – the inlet and pole garden – while on the landward side there are gum groves, playgrounds and lawn areas.
There is a design vocabulary of robust and brutalist elements that reference the past industrial use of the site and the relationship between the park’s elements.
There is a complex and thorough logic and process behind the design of the building, where all the elements, materials and functions are interrelated in a poetic manner.
“The Canopy provides generous shade and shelter to the elements, and becomes the architectural symbol of the park,” says Thalis.
It is a symbol that has already caught the imagination of park users in how they use every aspect of the building and has opened the park up to its future.
Tempe Macgowan is a landscape architect and freelance writer on landscape architecture.
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
Living Edge definitely has the edge when it comes to supplying furniture for the education sector. With a plethora of brands and collections at their fingertips, Living Edge provides the perfect solution for any learning environment.
Australia’s leading producer of solid-engineered oak flooring has recently launched a new suite of innovative resources to support creativity and ambition in the architecture and design community.
Whether it’s enhancing the sculptural volumes of the Cass Bay House, or creating a Piet Mondrian-like geometrical feature across the Pegasus Bay’s Esplanade Home, Neolith helps Massimiliano Capocaccia Architecture Studio augment the imaginative language of these coastal dwellings.
Interiors have a significant embodied carbon footprint and their churn rate is much greater than base buildings. Dr Caroline Noller of The Footprint Company lays out the situation.
Encouraging an organic, social university experience, CRAB studios have designed a fresh, stimulating campus for Abedian School of Architecture at Bond University, QLD. By Yen Dao.
As places of education, the projects shortlisted in The Learning Space category of the INDE.Awards 2021 provide all that is required and then some.
RMIT Design Hub presents Perceptive Power – an exhibition examining the complex and sometimes uneasy relationship between the artist and industry within the context of what is described as our ‘third industrial revolution’.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
“Design and architecture have that ability to change human behaviour, but it is coming from Country and guiding us, not being guided by the human-centric design,” says Bernadette Hardy. Read more from this exclusive interview, first published in Forbes Australia.
A new fashion store in Chengdu, China creates a truly relaxing aesthetic for hug. There is certainly atmosphere aplenty with a concept that is pared back, luxurious and absolutely on brand.
Sydney based studio, loopcreative, prefers to fly just under the radar, but its hospitality destinations are decidedly extroverted. We give you the crash course on loopcreative’s epic portfolio of restaurants and bars.
Takt is designing architecture that is sustainable, sensitive and desirable. This studio is leading the way as a beating architectural heart in the regions and is in sync not only with the landscape but with the local communities who call it their home.