Melbourne hosts latest Outdoor Showcase event

Why visit one thought-provoking community space when you can visit many? That was the creative motivation behind our latest Outdoor Showcase event, which recently saw a select group of landscape architects, design professionals and a cohort of RMIT students join us in Melbourne to experience three distinctly different projects.

Rather than focus on a single completed project, the tour format allowed us to join with key project partners and clients to showcase a diversity of sites to the wider industry, each with its own unique story to be told. The featured projects included Highlands Sustainable Park in Craigieburn, constructed in an old ‘dump zone’ through the extensive use of locally-recycled materials, the award-winning Aurora Adventure Park in Wollert, as well as a third project that’s still underway: River Valley in Sunshine North.

Guided tours were held at each of the three locations, with guests free to explore and interact with a wide range of structures spanning Fleetwood’s core areas of expertise – Play, Shade and Access. Each site also featured a creative presentation from one of the project leads: Alex Gibson, Development Manager from Your Land, Joel Watson, Design Lead from Fleetwood Urban and Matthew Bradbury, Senior Associate Landscape Architecture from Spiire.

Alex, Joel and Matthew delivered rare behind-the-scenes insights into the different project journeys, taking guests from the initial concept and detailing stages right through to discussing the challenges surrounding material selection, fabrication and installation. They also spent time outlining some of the specific structural and design techniques employed to help encourage people to spend more time enjoying the outdoors in their local community.

Showcasing the industry as a whole

At Fleetwood Urban, we’ve long been passionate about fostering a strong industry-sharing culture, and Outdoor Showcase events like the recent one in Melbourne are a perfect way to do it. In a relaxed and collaborative environment, they provide a valuable opportunity for current industry professionals – as well as future ones in the case of our recent RMIT student guests – to hear from key project partners and clients, exchange insights, celebrate innovation and, above all, learn directly about the vision and processes undertaken to bring each project to life. It’s a powerfully simple formula, and feedback is hugely positive.

“It was an outstanding day. The variety of sites was excellent, catering fantastic, the general way it was done, I couldn’t fault!”

Heather Mackay, Senior Landscape Architect, O2LA.

Following the success of our Outdoor Showcase events in 2019, more are being planned for 2020. For information about our industry events, sign up here.

Like to explore more of our Outdoor Showcase events?

Outdoor Showcase / Bokarina

Outdoor Showcase / Sydney

Outdoor Showcase / Highlands

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