What can Canberra’s garden city learn from the mega city?

Posted on 24 September, 2018

Densifying is a way for Canberra to maintain its DNA as a garden city, says acclaimed international architect and artist Richard Hassell.

Richard, the founding director of internationally-recognised architecture firm WOHA, is in Canberra this week to share his insights into sustainable architecture, and how designers of hyper-dense cities of the 21st century can make them great places to live.

Richard and colleague Wong Mun Summ established WOHA in 1994 and have since gained global recognition for integrating environmental and social principles into their inspiring and innovative designs.

WOHA demonstrates how high-density development can improve our quality of life. Take the Parkroyal on Pickering in Singapore, which opened in 2013, and has been awarded Green Mark Platinum, the nation’s highest environmental certification. The building doesn’t just integrate greenery – it is the dominant architectural idea. Landscaped arrangements echo natural landscapes and rock formations, gullies and waterfalls. More than 15,000 sqm of green walls and waterfalls, terraces and reflecting pools create a garden in the sky.

Parkroyal on Pickering. Credit: Patrick Bingham-Hall.

The Oasia Hotel Downtown, also in Singapore, is another sky garden, rather than skyscraper. A distinctive red mesh façade is the framework for a mosaic of greenery. The building integrates 21 species of creepers, plants and flowers and 33 types of plants and trees that attract birds and animals and introduce a new layer of biodiversity into the city. The building’s design is considered a prototype of land use intensification for the urban tropics.

But how is this relevant to Canberra – one of the lowest density capitals in the world?

Richard Hassell. Credit: Studio Periphery.

Australian-born Richard has lived in Singapore since 1989. But he knows Canberra intimately because his brother, mathematician Professor Andrew Hassell, works with the Australian National University.

“Canberra has greenery in its DNA,” Richard tells me. It is one of the few cities that planned for greenery from the very outset. But what he thinks makes it particularly unique is the “mix of bush and farmland” on our doorstep.

Dense development would help us preserve this unique characteristic and “make it an even more interesting city,” he adds. Imagine experiencing the buzz of urban life in the morning and then wandering out into the bush in the afternoon.

Oasia Hotel Downtown. Credit: Patrick Bingham-Hall.

“It’s surprising how little space you need to manage the number of people if you go dense. The whole of Canberra doesn’t have to densify. You can preserve the unique character of Canberra completely by doing that.”

We can evolve our garden city by moving beyond “greenery between the buildings” – and have greenery in the buildings as well. Singapore is leading the way, but One Central Park in Sydney and even our own Nishi Building are good examples of how we can do this.

He says Australian cities have “a strange relationship with density”. We’ll accept a 10 storey building, but 20 is “way too big” for us to stomach. Richard says there is very little difference between 20 or 40 storeys because “both are beyond the normal eye perception”.

“You can manage over-shadowing with orientation. Then you get four times as many people into the same area.”

“A suburb is really just a two-dimensional building: you rely on the roads, power, water, infrastructure… it’s just that you’re laid flat on the ground not vertically.”

PARKROYAL on Pickering. Credit: Patrick Bingham-Hall.

Once people see positive examples of density, they change their minds, he adds, pointing to the benefits of shared swimming pools and gardens without the burden of maintenance. WOHA is currently undertaking a project in Perth which is “basically a high-rise suburb” in one building. There’s a hills hoist and a garden shed on the roof, areas for potting, planting and pets.

There’s a solution for everything, Richard says. “It’s just architecture”.