Zipcode

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Zipcode' was work commissioned by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure (Northern Territory) and the Darwin Waterfront Authority. Paul Carter (through his studio Material Thinking) collaborated with Dyskors (Melbourne) and builders McMachon on the project: building a covered walkway between the Darwin Waterfront and the CBD and landscape design and public art and interpreation around this walkway. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Carter's 'Zipcode' was an 'interpretative overlay' for the $3.2 million Smith Street East Walkway, a contentious route that had to meet the different expectations of the many bodies responsible for administering this public space. A comprehensive interpretative strategy was embedded into a porous, linear system of shades, screens and street furniture. A ground pattern referenced early contacts with south-east Asia; a series of vertical inscriptions used 26 south-east Asian scripts and four designs on glass referenced Darwin's 'Origin of the Species'. Public information plaques explained the stories that had informed the design. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This was a major piece of public infrastructure in Darwin and it further developed Carter's siginifcant scholarly and practice-based research into placemaking (see 'Material Thinking' and 'The Road to Botany Bay' for example). The designers, including Carter, had to navigate multiple, competing interests to create a public space that presented and honoured the region's mosaic of multicultural communities and complex pasts. The project was launched by the Minister for Arts in 2010. The Darwin Waterfront redevelopment, including the Smith Street Walkway, was reviewed in 'Landscape Architecture Australia' ('Ken Maher: Darwin Waterfront', issue 39, February 2013).