Alpurrurulam is a remote desert community, 600km east of Tennant Creek on the Northern Territory – Queensland border. Its home to a predominantly Aboriginal population of 450 people and has the only school in the area.

A Northern Territory Medicare worker, who was providing nutrition advice to the local community, approached Pollen Studio to help with some of the public space challenges in the town. Through her work with the township’s women and children, she became aware of their desire to have a place for the younger kids to play and hang out.

Pollen Studio travelled to Alpurrurulam in February 2013 to meet members from the community and see how we could go about designing a new meeting and play space for the town. Descending by light plane into the community really brought home the remoteness of this place. Under a 42-degree sun, the red earth spread a blanket across a patchwork of tin sheds and a sprawling web of 4WD tracks.

The existing playground in Alpurrurulam is unusable, with the shade cloth removed from its frame and the swing seats missing. There is a popular skate ramp and basketball court in the community, but this is mostly used by the older kids and so there is really nothing suitable for the 3-8yr olds.

Through talking with local community members, it became clear that not everyone wanted to walk through the heat into the centre of town to use a play space. It was then decided that a series of meeting places be established at key locations throughout the community to provide ease of access.

We also spoke with Isa Skills to see how the construction of the meeting places could be incorporated into their skills program and link in with some of the current building and horticulture programs.

A typical sketch plan was developed for one of the sites that incorporated a traditional bough shade structure, rendered earth seat walls, shade trees, play equipment and a large snaking tyre sculpture.

We are currently continuing consultation with the community, local council and volunteers to develop the design and seek funding opportunities with the aim of returning to Alpurrurulam in late 2013 to build one of the meeting places with the community.

www.everythingexceptwalk.com

Brought to you by Pollen Studio, Jason Maling and Ella Hinkley.

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

The trees are speaking to us. They’re speaking in code.They want us to know they’re here. They’re trying to get our attention. They want to be loved. The trees are speaking to us. They’re speaking in code. The trees have something to say. Will you listen? First you must look…

Pollen Studio was invited by the City of Darebin to produce a large-scale site installation fo the inaugural True North Festival in Reservoir. 30 street trees were wrapped overnight with 4.5km’s of hand-dyed rope to provide an instant impact on the first day of the festival. Each tree was wrapped with a unique banded code that related a particular statistic from the local community. A series of encoded calling cards were handed out throughout the festival, so that people could match the code to each tree. This became a game of collecting, matching, and most of all conversing with the trees.

Pollen collaborated with Jason Maling and Ella Hinkley throughout the concept development and installation phases as well as coordinating 15 volunteers on the night of the installation. The meditative process of wrapping the trees was expertly documented  by Screaming Eagle Films, backed by the incredible vibes of local musician, Qua.

Pollen Studio was contracted by the City of Moonee Valley in July 2012 to prepare a Feasibility & Options Study to investigate possibilities for reducing user-conflicts within the park. The City of Moonee Valley had previously prepared the Travancore Park Issues Paper that aimed to address ‘regular reports of commuter and recreational cyclists impacting on their activities within Travancore Park.’

Pollen conducted detailed site investigations while consulting with Council officers, key service providers and local community members to develop 3 costed site options. Each option aims to address the existing site conditions, issues and conflicts in a different way.

We then continued consulting with the External Working group, Key Stakeholders and the Public towards an outcome that is acceptable for the whole community.

Key design issues where addressed throughout the highly consultative process including: shared path location and conflict with other users; proximity to shared path for dogs and recreational users; general park access and improvements; Dog off-leash area and conflicts with other park users; Conservation values and Signage.

A ‘Walkshop’ was also held with Council officers and interested community members to walk the length of the proposed route, allowing a greater understanding of site conditions.

Pollen Studio worked with Germinate and a menagerie of passionate creatives to develop one of Australia’s biggest solar powered street parties as part of the City of Melbourne’s 2012 Melbourne Music Week program.

Pollen was responsible for site planning, coordination and artwork, expanding our typical role as landscape architect and artist to creative directors.

Set on the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne, the sun made sure that the beats most certainly got down!

For the second year in a row Pollen Studio was invited to prepare a site installation for the Secret Garden stage at Harvest Music Festival. The aim of the installation was to invite people into the audience of the two stages that were being powered by solar energy, courtesy of Germinate.

Pollinate is all about the power of sun, how it makes us grow and keeps our ecosystem thriving. Creatures from the Secret Garden were enlarged to human scale and placed within the audience to create a scenographic background to the party atmosphere.

Throughout the concept development and construction we collaborated with The Projects who provided valuable insights into creative design, installation and lighting.

Our busy bees, butterflies, birds, trees and flowers were created by CnC Routing 19mm sustainably sourced Hoope Pine plywood into self-supporting forms. The creatures have been up-cycled for use in other places, including Melbourne Music Week’s Sun Beats Down festival, LUPA clothing store’s display and Pollen Studio’s workspace.

Harvest Music Festival, 2012Sun Beats Down solar powered music festival as part of Melbourne Music Week, 2012

LUPA clothing store, Northcote, 2012

Dan Nunan of Pollen Studio was selected to be one of four artists to partake in Banyule City Council’s 24 Hour Emergency Art project. As part of the Winter in Banyule Festival, this event asked the four artists to create a work in 2 x 12hour stints in the Banyule Arts Space, effectively creating a two day artist-in-residence program.

‘Phylum’ sits between ‘Kingdom’ and ‘Class’ in the taxonomic classification of living things. This installation aims to bring awareness to the plant diversity that once existed in Banyule and how that diversity has rapidly declined in the last 200 years.

Phylum is a hanging installation that presents the spectrum of Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVC’s) from within 5 kilometres of the gallery site as they existed in 1750 and as they are now. Each column represents a different EVC and each row represents a different type of species present within that EVC. The empty pots are representative of the rapid disappearance of our indigenous flora and the ‘gaps’ that appear in our biodiversity as a result.

EuryModal is a lower pool RMIT Landscape Architecture studio that investigates the future of our public domain through scenario mapping, outdoor projections and other in-situ interventions.

If we were to describe ourselves as Eury-Modal (Eury meaning ‘broad’ and Modal pertaining to a mode of existence) this would imply an ability for people to be able to exist in a broad range of environments.

Climate change and social upheaval often means we have to change our living circumstances rapidly to respond. Our urban landscapes also have to adapt quickly, coping with changes in sea level, increased inhabitation, access to resources and changes to infrastructure. There are many possible scenarios that could induce the need for rapid adaptation. This studio aims to explore some of those scenarios and test them in an urban environment that is particularly susceptible to change.

The inner urban suburb of Port Melbourne is prone to a range of external influences including possible sea level rise, increasing urban density, changes in land-use and infrastructure. A range of scenarios will be tested at various sites within Port Melbourne using animated modeling techniques and on-site installations.

What are some of the tools and technologies we can use to adapt to rapidly changing living circumstances? This studio will look towards simple low-cost technologies, mobile and emergency architectures as well as planning for future proofing.

A projection exploration was conducted at the RMIT city campus in collaboration with Joseph Norster from These Are The Projects We Do Together, the students tested their future scenarios in a real-time, real-space environment.

The Herd installation at Harvest Music Festival was a collaboration between Pollen Studio, Carbon Arts, The Herd (energy suppliers) and  Germinate (solar energy stage) to bring awareness to the solar energy initiatives that were taking place within and outside the festival.

A series of fabric-wrapped hay bale structures were set up on recycled wooden shipping pallets, forming a series of towers visible from key points within the festival. Each time people signed up to The Herd’s solar energy mailing list, they were invited to make a new coloured hand print on the fabric. As the day progressed, more hand prints appeared; a sign of the progressive movement towards sustainable energy sources.

The pallets provided seating opportunities within the installation, creating a sense of gathering and forum for discussion to take place. At night, the towers were lit using solar power, creating illuminated monuments to the power of our collective energy.

BOX was one of 11 shortlisted projects for the City of Melbourne’s 1200 Buildings Public Art Commission. The project was run by Carbon Arts and aimed to raise awareness of a number of existing office buildings that are currently being retrofitted to become more sustainable.

BOX is a 6 x 2.5 x 2.5m converted shipping container. BOX is a scaled down example of how buildings can be retrofitted to lower their global footprint and stand as an example for a more sustainable future. BOX acts as a self-contained, flexible and environmentally responsive space that can adapt to multiple sites and functions. BOX is a transportable vehicle for change. Retrofitting a building works on the principle of making focused and effective changes to a building’s fabric to improve its function and performance. These changes can be as much about how efficiently we take away layers of the building’s skin as it is about building on existing infrastructure.

Shipping containers are designed for durability and a life of transportation at sea. Once they reach the end of their useful life they are destined for dormancy or recycling. A growing trend has seen these indestructible boxes up-cycled for various uses such as hotels, café’s and temporary shops. BOX aims to build upon this trend as an exemplar for sustainable development. Walls, doors and ceiling are all constructed of a corrugated, coated, corten steel. These elements have been stripped away, cut and folded strategically to be re-imagined as seats, planter boxes and signage.

The add-on elements to BOX are primarily what help it to be self-contained and sustainable.  Solar panels on the roof are provided to give BOX a long-term power solution. Water is harvested and treated through a series of raised planter boxes using indigenous plants and layers of sandy filtration media. First generation City of Melbourne info panels are installed on the side of BOX to allow pedestrians to interact with the real-time energy data that the building is producing and compare it with other buildings in the city. Recycled bicycle frames are re-constructed as a sculptural wall on one end of BOX to allow for multi-level bicycle parking.

BOX occupies one existing on-road car parking space outside the building. This is an intentional statement that we should be moving towards a less car dependent society and more towards sustainable methods of transport. BOX provides for multiple bicycle parking as well as a rest space for pedestrians who are travelling from nearby train or tram stops to their office. BOX is envisaged as a space that can be used for multiple and varied events. It works as an outdoor lunchroom for the building as much as it does as an information centre for passers by. It can be used as a café in the morning or a screen projection space at night. Leave your bicycle in the morning and pick it up in the evening; repaired, rejuvenated and ready to go again.

BOX uses the adjacent docks of industry past and transforms it into a knowledge based Melbourne context, much in the way that we need to re-imagine the existing stock of antiquated office buildings into leading examples of sustainable practice.

Cambridge Street Reserve in Collingwood, VIC is a small reserve nestled amongst the factories and offices of inner Melbourne. In 2011 the City of Yarra developed a concept plan for the site and contracted Pollen Studio to develop the design and prepare contract documentation drawings for the construction.

Drawing upon the history of fabric and clothing production in the surrounding Foy & Gibson buildings, we developed a design that is playful, sturdy and functional. Given the limited amount of open space in Collingwood, the reserve is often used by nearby office workers as a lunch space, so seating became an important consideration.

Large coloured steel posts mimic sewing needles and act as an entrance feature to the park, announcing its existence. A series of concrete walls with measuring tape stencils frame a new play area, catering for the emerging trend for young families living in nearby apartments. Recycled cable reels are entwined with coloured rope to look like thimbles, offering more seating opportunities as stools.

The park’s success can be measured by the amount of people that use it on any given day and also by the fact that Pollen delivered a project on time, under budget and to a high quality finish.