PETER WALKER’S POINT THE BARANGAROO RESERVE TRANSFORMS SYDNEY HARBOUR’S OLD INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE. BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA BARANGAROO DELIVERY AUTHORITY DELIVERY BARANGAROO 78 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 79 hen I was a child growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, my understanding of landscape was one of changing purpose. Cornfields were converted into housing subdivisions and office parks. WOld winding roads were straightened, thickened with extra lanes, and punc- tuated by traffic lights. It was the small discoveries—an arrowhead in the garden, a bullet lodged in a tree—that revealed the older stories of these fractured land- scapes. The layers of roads, power lines, and strip malls made any trace of a site’s earlier history difficult to imagine. But what if we were to allow a landscape to break free from the confines of con- crete curbs, smooth out its industrial wrinkles, and pluck off architectural blemishes in an effort to recapture a sem- blance of its younger, more picturesque self? Where injections of earth and rock serve as the Botox for an aging landscape, erasing the creases of human develop- RIGHT ment in favor of a more natural topogra- The Barangaroo phy. So begins the story of Barangaroo 2010 Reserve site before construction began. Reserve in Sydney, Australia. COURTESY JOHNSON PILTON WALKER PILTON JOHNSON COURTESY 80 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 81 This new headland park, opened in August 2015, transformed 14 acres of a flat concrete shipping terminal into an approximate vision of Sydney’s Botany Bay circa 1788. It is the first stage of a $6 billion (AUD), 54-acre ur- ban renewal development planned as a major extension of Sydney’s central business district to bring recreation, housing, shopping, and offices down to the water’s edge. Barangaroo’s original headland evolved from being an important hunting and fishing area for the Aboriginal Cadigal people to becom- ing a hub for Sydney’s burgeoning shipping industry. Since the 1830s, successive devel- opment of the shoreline required land recla- mation and the cutting back of the existing sandstone cliffs. However, as time passed, and the size of commercial ships grew, port facilities were focused elsewhere given the inability of the site to accommodate modern commercial ships. In 2003, the New South Wales government slated the area for rede- velopment into parklands and commercial space; existing stevedoring companies were provided three years to relocate, leading to the site’s industrial demise by 2006. Designed by Peter Walker, FASLA, of PWP Landscape Architecture, in association with RIGHT the Australian design practice Johnson Pilton The Barangaroo Walker (JPW), Barangaroo Reserve is sig- 2015 Reserve headland nificant in how it knits an enormous piece of as completed in 2015. AUTHORITY DELIVERY BARANGAROO 82 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 83 ABOVE Major James Taylor’s panorama of Sydney Harbour dates from the early 1820s. Millers Point neglected waterfront back into Sydney’s public is the outcropping with two realm. Standing along the generous outcrop windmills at right center. of rocky foreshore, with the waves tickling LEFT your toes and fig trees framing the sky, you Colonial-era wharves can almost imagine Captain Arthur Phillip at Millers Point. sailing past on his way to establish Great BELOW Britain’s famous penal colony along Sydney’s By the 1960s, the site modern shores. This vision is largely thanks was a busy container port. to the cunning and uncompromising resolve of the project’s champion, the former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who left office in 1996, appointed himself the guardian of Sydney’s harbor, and battled his way toward Baranga- roo’s delivery for more than a decade. Keating has a reputation as one of Australia’s most cultured prime ministers. He is self- RIGHT educated in architecture, and has a passion for N Detail from an 1836 French Empire clocks and a euphoric appre- map showing the Millers Point headland ciation of Gustav Mahler. However, his ability in Sydney Harbour. to craft words in ways that can both flog ↘ BOTTOM AND TOP DOMAIN, IMAGES/PUBLIC HISTORIC DOMAIN IMAGES/PUBLIC HISTORIC 84 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 85 2015 2012 HAMILTON LUND /BARANGAROO DELIVERY AUTHORITY DELIVERY /BARANGAROO LUND HAMILTON INSET AUTHORITY, DELIVERY BARANGAROO 86 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 87 BARANGAROO — MASTER PLAN (DETAIL) N PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE PWP 88 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 89 URBAN CONNECTIONS N → and amuse has also made him one of Aus- the job, and they weren’t. In 2008, Keating tralia’s most feisty political warriors. When sent a letter to Morris Iemma, the premier Sydney’s Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, was of the New South Wales government, ac- delivered a petition with the signatures of companied by a sketch drawn up by Keat- 11,000 concerned Sydney residents request- ing himself, which stated the premier’s and ing an inquiry into Barangaroo’s develop- the treasurer’s agreement to allow Keating ment, she felt obligated to table the appeal in to have political authority and provide the Parliament. In response, Keating ripped into “broad guidance needed” for the design and her for bowing to “sandal-wearing, muesli- delivery of the headland. chewing, bike-riding pedestrians without any idea of the metropolitan quality of the city or Keating’s resolve to shed the site’s industrial what Sydney would lose if Barangaroo were maritime heritage in favor of developing it as a to fail.” When Keating refused to allow cruise natural domain and headland stirred the ire of ships to dock at Barangaroo, Carnival Aus- many within the Sydney community. In 2011, tralia’s executive chairman, Ann Sherry, told the Australian Institute of Architects’ New him: “Paul, the trouble with you is you don’t South Wales Chapter put forward an alterna- tive scheme they dubbed A Better Barangaroo, TOP LEFT go on cruises.” To which he quickly replied, The natural angle of “Well, Ann, I don’t own a wheelchair.” put together by a group of 57 independent ar- the local geological chitects and urban planners, which addressed strike is visible in the Like a terrier to a bone, Keating for years several attributes of the 54-acre site—including shallows at Laings Point, near Sydney. continued his pursuit of the headland by fi- a rethinking of Keating’s headland park. None nessing his way from spectator to eventually of the critique fazed him. “Naturalism has a TOP RIGHT Barangaroo’s becoming chairman of both the Public Do- place in urban design; we don’t have to have tessellated sandstone main and Design Review committees for the parks which are squares, flat, or worse,” Keat- blocks were oriented Barangaroo development. An international ing says. “The whole profession was opposed to match the angle of design ideas competition was arranged to to Barangaroo—the Institute of Architects in Sydney’s geological strike. ensure public consideration of the site, as Sydney all signed up to oppose it. And they all many different agencies were vying to take now love it,” he chuckles. “I’ve taught them OPPOSITE Downtown Sydney ownership of it. However, there was never something about landscape—something they with the Barangaroo any guarantee that the winners of the design should have known.” precinct shaded in red. competition—the Sydney firms Hill Thalis, These areas had been Paul Berkemeier Architect, and Jane Irwin Keating’s dogged pursuit of Barangaroo has largely inaccessible N to the public. Landscape Architecture—would be given been part of his broader ambition toward ↘ EARTH GOOGLE ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE PWP 90 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 91 2010 2015 RIGHT Hard edges and sharp angles: A long concrete slab dominated the Barangaroo site before construction. OPPOSITE Today a curving shoreline includes a new bay rimmed in local sandstone. The old slab THIS AND PAGE WALKER, OPPOSITE PILTON JOHNSON COURTESY is still faintly visible underwater, a ghost of the industrial past. 92 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 93 PETER WALKER SKETCH — STONE PLAN ABOVE Peter Walker’s early sketch for sandstone design at Barangaroo Reserve. PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE PWP 94 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 95 BARANGAROO HEADLAND PARK — STONE OUTCROP REFERENCE PLAN PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE PWP RIGHT Barangaroo Reserve sandstone drawing. Most sandstone in the project was quarried and reused on site. N 96 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE NOV 2016 / 97 STONE FORESHORE — GENERAL 3–D VIEW FROM NORTH → re-creating the constellation of Sydney’s natu- ralistic headlands to emulate the way the harbor existed during European settlement. At the center is Goat Island—also known as historic Redfern Park Speech, delivered in Memel, the aboriginal word for the pupil of 1992, was a powerful reflection of the prob- the eye—which was the central place from lems that modern society had inflicted on which natives would canoe to the surround- Australia’s indigenous people: ing headlands of Ballast Point, Balls Head, STONE FORESHORE — and Barangaroo. “This was the intimate part It begins, I think, with that act of recogni- BLOCK POSITION PLAN of the harbor where the Aboriginal people tion. Recognition that it was we who did BAULDERSTONE) (FORMERLY LEASE LEND BAULDERSTONE) (FORMERLY LEASE LEND lived,” Keating says. “For a city of five mil- the dispossessing. We took the traditional lion people, to be able to recover that natural lands and smashed the traditional way of own boat for the better part of a day, look- intimacy, which no other great city has, is a life.