New Quay central Park
Public Realm
Year - 2016
Client - MAB & City of Melbourne
Scope - Sketch design through to contract admin
Location - New Quay, Docklands Melbourne, Victoria
Budget - $6m
Team - CAStudios / SAALA in collaboration with Aspect Studios
New Quay Central Park is a collaborative project between SAALA / CAStudios and Aspect Studios Melbourne. This new civic park is deigned in relation to the new Banksia Residential tower and its underground car park designed by MCR Architects. The new 4600sq m park will combine with the 2.2ha Ron Barassi Snr Park, completed last year, and a planned 4000sq m linear park to provide 3.06ha of green space for the New Quay precinct in Melbourne Docklands.
New Quay Central Park, will provide a comfortable, green space for locals and also facilitate a range of events with crowds of up to 5,000 people. The park is designed to be programmatically ‘loose’ - flexible enough to allow for a range of activities including outdoor dining, picnicking, strolling, walking a dog, sitting, informal play, and mid-scale events.
The following were some of the key design drivers for the park:
• Provide a strong relationship with and connection to the waterfront
• Encourage active edges to the park.
• Minimise traffic movements around the park.
• Improve east-west connections into the site through existing laneways.
• Provide informal play opportunities
• Provide a significant tree canopy to enhance character and amenity of the park.
• Ensure surrounding developments are designed to mitigate noise from events.
• Minimise negative wind impacts to provide a comfortable space for pedestrians.
Enjoying a north-facing aspect, New Quay will capture the sun all day and contain only Australian species of plants. This planting specifically design to not only provide robust and resilient planting for the foreshore conditions but also to encourage greater urban native biodiversity and to show case Australian indigenous vegetation to match the native flower-inspired design of the 108-unit building.
