Sydney Park Bike Track has won Gold at the 2020 Sydney DrivenxDesign Awards – delivering Sydney Park, landscape architects Turf Design Studio + Environmental Partnership and the City of Sydney their second major award for the former rubbish dump and brickpit site in the past month.
Announcing winners today, DrivenxDesign Awards Founder Mark Bergin said Sydney Park Bike Track had won the annual awards program’s important Gold Award in the Landscape Design category, celebrating creativity and innovation in the use of practical, aesthetic, horticultural, and environmentally sustainability components.
The win comes weeks after Turf Design Studio + Environmental Partnership’s Sydney Park Water Re-use Project, neighbouring the Bike Track, received an international Architizer A+ Award, confirming it one of the best new parks in the world.
Accepting the DrivenxDesign Award, Turf Design Studio Founder Mike Horne said: “Our design reinvented the original facility and was intended to push the envelope of conventional bike track layouts.
Featuring exciting twists and turns and challenges, we’ve moved away from the former roadway-focused track to provide a range of creative play opportunities for both young children and pre-teens.”
Turf Project Director Scott Ibbotson said the team was thrilled the bike track has already become a much-loved asset for the community, who was heavily consulted throughout the process, and that it promotes bike riding as a playful, healthy and sociable experience.
The Bike Track represents Stage 1 in a youth precinct master-planned by Turf and Environmental Partnership with Aileen Sage Architects and Fiona Robbe, in collaboration with the City of Sydney.
Construction of the next stage, a $2.5million world-class skate park, is currently underway.
Sydney Park Bike Track was one of two DrivenxDesign Awards presented to Turf Design Studio, the second being Kensington Street Spice Alley, awarded Gold in the Urban Design category.
One of Sydney’s most popular eat-streets, Kensington Street Spice Alley at Sydney’s inner city Central Park was presented with the 2020 Gold Award for Urban Design, which celebrates creativity and innovation in the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages, and the connections between people and places, movement and urban form, nature and the built fabric.
Working in collaboration with the late Jeppe Aagaard Andersen, Frasers Property, Greencliff and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Turf was tasked with reimagining the public domain of the Carlton United Brewery site at Broadway in Chippendale.
Presenting the Award, DrivenxDesign says, “Turf Design Studio with Aagaard Andersen have created a refined public domain that merges infrastructure and history through an interconnected network of new streets, lanes, parks and plazas, including the road connecting Broadway to Regent Street, links to Carlton Street and Central Park and the micro-laneways of Spice Alley.
“Originally part of Tooth and Co brewery’s 6.5 ha ‘mini city’ established in 1835, Kensington Street’s transition from its industrial beginnings into a sought-after retail, entertainment and dining destination illustrates the power of placemaking, and the impact quality public spaces have on building communities and revitalising cities.”
Image: https://bikelist.org/
