Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology have engaged with older people living in high-density Brisbane, to come up with key design considerations for more usable and comfortable public spaces. Here are seven:
A wide variety of places to sit, to enjoy being out in public and watching people. Usable, universal design seating – rather than having to sit on the grass – is especially important for older people as rest-stops or destinations.
Hand rails on stairs and steep paths for safety and confidence.
Drinking fountains and trees for shade and comfort.
Plentiful and clean public toilets. The lack of such facilities can be debilitating and an obstacle to some older people’s enjoyment of the public realm.
Wider paths and safer buffers between pedestrians and high-traffic roadways.
Safer and clearly posted pedestrian crossings on busy thoroughfares. Older people avoided walking in some urban areas because of concerns about crossing roads.
Clearer delineation on paths between areas for cyclists and runners and those who tend to move more slowly.
Read the article by Desley Vine and Laurie Buys from QUT on The Conversation.
First photos of the Hyperloop Test Track:
Hyperloop One have revealed images of a 500-metre test track of their high-speed transport system.
Out in the Nevada desert, the 3.3 metre wide, soon to be more than 3km long, near-vacuum tube aims to propel a pod-like vehicle at speeds faster than aeroplanes.
Australia has long toyed with proposals for a high-speed rail between Sydney and Melbourne to allow travel between the two cities in an hour: the Devloop, ready for its first trial by mid-year, may be a solution.
The City of Sydney celebrates International Women’s Day with a review of top city spaces named for powerful Australian women of our past, including at Barangaroo, Nielsen’s Terrace, Jessie Street Gardens, the Kirsova Playgrounds, Lilian Fowler Reserve or Bunn and Murray Streets.
Street Furniture Australia’s entire product range and manufacturing operation has received carbon neutral certification through Climate Active™. Achieving carbon neutral certification marks a significant milestone in our operation and the culmination of a four year long process of detailed measurement and analysis. Climate Active™ is the only Australian government-backed carbon neutral certification programme for businesses to measure, reduce, and offsets their carbon emissions. It is one of the most rigorous carbon-neutral programs in the world. An approved Emissions Reduction Strategy (ERS) is central to achieving certification through Climate Active. Street Furniture Australia has elected to use SBTi validated science-based targets to ensure their ERS is meaningful and aligns with the 2015 Paris Agreement – to limit global temperature rises to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels. For those emissions that can’t be …
Linea Bin is the newest addition to Street Furniture Australia’s minimalist Linea range. Built from stainless steel for strength, durability and a refined aesthetic, it has been thoughtfully designed with input from landscape architects and waste managers to deliver hygiene, accessibility and sustainability in the public realm. Built to LastA robust stainless steel frame and panel system ensures Linea Bin performs in high-traffic environments. A full-height stainless steel 316 piano hinge and splash tray provide exceptional strength, hygiene and corrosion resistance, withstanding daily impacts from trolleys and cleaning equipment. “Durability was paramount,” says Pearson Bulmer, Senior Industrial Designer at Street Furniture Australia. “Every detail needed to perform in the public realm for years to come – but also be designed for disassembly so parts can be repaired, replaced or recycled …
With the look and feel of natural timber, backed by 12 months of performance testing for the public realm, engineered wood joins Street Furniture Australia’s selection of batten materials. Designers and place custodians can now choose from three batten options to achieve a timber look: natural Spotted Gum hardwood, low maintenance aluminium Wood Without Worry, and engineered wood known as Onewood HRT. See our Engineered Wood: Onewood HRT brochure or book a presentation. What is engineered wood?Onewood HRT (Homogeneous Reconstituted Timber) is a solid engineered timber, made from fast-growing FSC certified poplar and eucalyptus fibres that are compressed under heat and pressure with a resin binder. It is solid throughout with an organic grain and, like real hardwood, can be sanded to refresh. Street Furniture Australia partners with a Singapore-based …
Six women passionate about landscape joined the International Women’s Day breakfast table with Street Furniture Australia, to discuss equality and this year’s theme, #BeBoldForChange. Industry veteran Oi Choong says landscape architecture encouraged her to be bold from the start – to her, it was a “joy” of the profession. “It was a new profession, so you were able to reach your tentacles everywhere. We were allowed to extend our vision and be bold. We experimented, we tried to integrate with other disciplines. We claimed our territory,” she says. With more than thirty years of practice in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, China and the UAE, the current Consulting Partner with Context says offers to work internationally were joyously formative in her early career. “They gave me the opportunity to leap in, almost blindly, …
Craig Czarny, a Director of Hansen Partnership, has worked for almost 30 years across major public projects, including urban improvement and regeneration initiatives in Australia and overseas. As an Urban Designer and Landscape Architect based in Melbourne, he promotes a special brand of ‘strategic design’ to projects in far-flung regions of Asia, with project work in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos and China. Can you give us an insight into your thinking about Australian design knowledge as an export? As a young Australian practitioner in the 1980s, I recall looking principally to the US and Europe for inspiration. Having worked in both these regions in the early nineties, and observing the maturing of the landscape architecture discipline in Australia, I think it’s due time for us to export our skills …
By Winnifred R Louis. Parks that ‘feel’ unsafe can become trapped in a vicious cycle fuelled by underuse, writes psychology professor Winnifred Louis for StreetChat, but these public spaces can be saved. WL: This is a write-up of a presentation that I gave for the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), and I want to credit their event which was very interesting and fun. If you are wondering why we need to think about fear in parks, my answer is that it is important on two fronts. One, for managing actual risks for park users, and two, managing their risk perceptions. There are a heap of guidelines and standards that address the first task, and one reason for the AILA event was to raise awareness of new guidelines (about mitigating the …
