AWARD: The Goods Line
Project Team: ASPECT Studios with CHROFI for the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority
Citiation: This former historic rail line is bound by a concentration of Sydney’s key cultural, educational, and media institutions that mostly turn their back on the area. Aspect Studios, CHROFI, and the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority have taken a creative and bold approach to designing an elegant and active linear public space with dynamic connections to surrounding uses.
A primary movement spine is linked into a comprehensive pedestrian network, with a series of spaces to encourage events, activities and engagement. The aim is to create a new kind of civic space which blurs the boundaries of land ownership along its length and facilitates strong urban, stakeholder and community connections beyond its site boundary, with links to Central Station, Darling Harbour and the Exhibition Centre.
Bringing government authorities and institutions cooperatively together has created the potential for turning a blighted area into a valuable community asset. With an emphasis on participatory design, the project is focussed on providing for a diversity of users to interact in a series of the landscaped spaces transforming historic industrial infrastructure into contemporary social infrastructure.
