Glebe4: The Foreshore Walk

BACKGROUND: The City of Sydney commissioned JMD Design (of which Anton James is a director) to design the 2.5km walk along the foreshore of Sydney Harbour from Pyrmont Bridge Road to Rozelle Bay. The first stage of this project had a $10 million budget and was completed in 2006. As subsequent stages unfolded, new components of the project were exhibited at 'Repair', the Australian Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. CONTRIBUTION: This large scale multidisciplinary public project was led by landscape architects and fused the complex demands of heritage, engineering, sensitive intertidal marine environments, and public open space requirements. The final part of the project involved opening the last stretch of land connecting 27 hectares of open space with streets, paths and new facilities. While the project was previously published in '1000 x Landscape Architects' by Verlagshaus Braun in 2008, it was exhibited in 'Repair' in a new context that focused on the ecological restoration that has taken place; including habitat for native plants, birds and marine life. The exhibition showed how the project reconnected a fragmented ecology, which included archaeological elements, a marine habitat, and a restored saltmarsh that allowed intertidal habitats. SIGNIFICANCE: 'Glebe4' was 1 of 15 projects selected for the curated exhibition 'Ground': a showcase of Australian projects projected inside the national Pavilion. It was selected from 126 submissions from around the country. The Venice Architecture Biennale is the most important global gathering of the built environment, attracting more than 220,000 visitors during its six month duration. The project was published in the exhibition catalogue which was published by Actar (Spain). 'Repair' received extensive national and international critical and media coverage.