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Street Furniture Australia is honoured to be named winner of the Built Environment category at the inaugural Australian Smart Cities Awards in October 2018. These are the country’s first awards recognising leadership, best practice and action to advance the smart cities movement, evaluated by a seven-person jury chaired by David Singleton AM. The winners were announced at Smart Cities Week in Sydney, organised by the Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand. Street Furniture Australia received the Built Environment award for #BackyardExperiment, an eight-day activation of Garema Place, Canberra, which took place in October 2016. It was a small project that made a big impact. By adopting a people-first approach and quantifying the impact of design, the method of activation became an international case study. #BackyardExperiment was one of Australia’s first …

Street Furniture Australia recently received a 2018 Australian Smart Cities Award for white paper #BackyardExperiment. The project was a collaboration between Street Furniture Australia and the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, with support from the ACT Government. The park was designed by Context. The judges describe the project as a “partnership driven and replicable approach to smart cities,” that quantifies the impact of street activation. Below is a project summary: The Numbers … Garema Place is a grey and underused area surrounded by cafe and shops in the heart of Canberra CBD. #BackyardExperiment brought colour, movable furniture, lighting and lawn to the plaza for eight days. Park designed by Context Landscape Architects. Street Furniture Australia set up three time-lapse cameras to capture data before and during activation. Weekdays and weekend days were compared. Data …

As Founding Executive Director of the Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand, Adam Beck has a mission to accelerate sustainability in cities and towns through technology, data and intelligent design. The Council partnered with AILA and the Internet of Things Alliance Australia to demonstrate these ideas in action in Sydney with the Future Street, designed by Place Design Group as part of the 2017 International Festival of Landscape Architecture. Beck is also an Ambassador with Portland-based think tank EcoDistricts, a former lecturer and studio lead in social impact assessment and community engagement at the University of Queensland, and spent 15 years with global consulting firms like Arup. He shares his Future Street findings and vision for next-gen cities in a smarter, more sustainable world. What can we learn from Future Street? Future Street exceeded our …

Street Furniture Australia will proudly contribute furniture prototypes to the Future Street installation in Sydney this October, with ideas set to enliven your lunch break, outdoor meeting or commute. The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), Internet of Things Alliance Australia (IOTAA) and Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand (SCCANZ) will build the street of the future at Circular Quay on Alfred Street, in front of Customs House, from October 12 to 15. Place Design Group is leading the design and build of the project, which forms part of the 2017 International Festival of Landscape Architecture: The 3rd City. A four-day celebration will showcase a range of street, landscape, IoT, utilities, transport, urban design and placemaking technologies and ideas, including self-driving vehicles, with the Australian Government recently announced as a …

by Jason Packenham. Urban leaders are reimagining Australia’s future cities, starting with Streets 2.0 – a cross-disciplinary forum held in Sydney – with the conversation to continue in March at the Cities 4.0 Summit in Melbourne. With autonomous vehicles on the horizon, now is the time for such events. Provocative discussions at Streets 2.0 raised as many questions as answers. In continuing this provocation, this piece is as much a recap as it is a wondering of where to from here. What do we mean by the street? What role do streets play in our cities today? What do we want and need from them? Looking forward, what is their role in a future with autonomous vehicles? How do we achieve some of the grand visions of Streets 2.0? Are they possible? …