Calvert: A City in a Garden

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 5th Studio - Holbrook's architectural practice - developed Calvert for the Wolfson Economics Prize 2014, responding to the call to deliver a visionary, economically viable, and popular Garden City. The propositional project offers a series of civic environments that fuel debate regarding the value of spatial planning and use of public land. Calvert was exhibited at Occupied, Design Hub, 2016. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Calvert offers alternatives to market driven, contemporary development that often lacks engagement with the risk and spatial complexities that make good cities. In response to the 'garden city' concept, the imagined 'city in a garden' creates conditions for mediation between individual citizens and the collective. Calvert proposes that huge investments of money, land and political energy might be used in multiple ways to create delight. This project draws on Holbrook's ongoing design research in developing strategic thinking that explores dynamics between architecture and the scale of infrastructure and landscape, particularly within conservation, environmental sustainability and regeneration projects. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The Calvert project featured in Architects' Journal (June 2014), in Bauwelt magazine (cover, September 2016) and at Occupied, a significant showcase of critical urban design. The exhibition - curated by Grace Mortlock, David Neustein and Fleur Watson - was critically reviewed (SMH - August 2016, Architecture Australia - January 2017) and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier's Design Award (2016). Proving influential in political and planning circles, Calvert was instrumental in 5th Studio winning a project to advise the UK National Infrastructure Commission on growth along the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor.