A public place is accessed by all, and helps increase the wellbeing or facility of a community. When designing for public places, it's important that we design for all, while being environmentally conscious.

Simplicity and ease of access often underline the characteristics of public spaces of this kind. Providing the community with something they require goes simply beyond seeing a need and filling it, it’s about being responsible, acknowledging landscape and wildlife, and ensuring the development is fit for purpose and will last for many years.

The Urban & Landscape category at the Sustainability Awards showcases parks, pedestrian bridges and walkways, pools, shelters, picnic facilities, toilet blocks and playgrounds. Submissions can also include green roofs, green walls and other urban gardens and similar installations. Finalists and winners of the category look to address issues within a community by creating projects or places that mitigate within the said community, in a manner that is sustainable and ethical.

Alexander Symes Architect was the winner of two awards in 2021, a testament to the practice’s resourcefulness and sustainable expertise. One of these awards was within the Urban & Landscape category for its People Parkers project.

People Parkers is a recycled plastic mobile parklet that has transformed a humble carpark into an outdoor dining setting. Roadways are public space and this product is a tactical mechanism to temporarily reallocate this space and inform options for long term changes of use.

People Parkers

Many parklets are deemed too expensive or immovable, and are not typically associated with sustainability. People Parkers opted to create a suite of movable, robust, re-usable disassembly parklet design that is recyclable and made from low environmental impact materials. The products can be utilised anywhere, and demonstrate how a carpark can serve as more than a place to leave your vehicle as we progress to car-share and shared autonomous vehicles.

Holcim is the proud partner of the Urban & Landscape category. The creators of Best of the Best, winning zero emissions concrete ECOPact, Holcim looks to shoulder the responsibility for the impacts its products have on the planet. The company aims to lead the way in creating products that generate fewer carbon emissions, to lower the construction industry’s emissions in the race to net zero.

Many innovative submissions are entered into the Urban & Landscape category at the Sustainability Awards, and we’d love to see your project when the time comes. Entries are now open, and we'd love to see yours! Submit here.

Jarrod Reedie

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