The New Architects and Graduates Group (NAG) and the Adelaide City Council have partnered to help rethink the way public space is used in Adelaide, through a design competition to design a shade structure in Bonython Park. WAX and sculptor Rick Clise, approached the project as a chance to generate and share ideas, in a collaborative, explorational process.
WAX Design's concept, XYLEM, was a celebration of the natural and the constructed. It was also an exploration of how light can be crafted to create shade, prospect and shelter. A stainless steel support structure appears to emerge from the ground plane with an artifical root system, which creates sculpted earth mounds and forms congregation areas. Rising up from the support system is the canopy and a series of inclined laser cut leaves that partially open, creating dramatic contrast of light and shade, whilst ensuring shelter is maintained. During rainfall the water captured from the canopy is funnelled down the structure and cascades through the structure, over the earth mounds and into a wetlands system. XYLEM is allegorical, representing the resilience of nature in the wake of industrial intervention. It combines the poetic and the functional, through light and structural elegance, to create beauty whilst satisfying basic human necessity for shade, prospect and shelter.
Congratulations to the winning design 'Flock', which can be seen along with all the other entries on the NAG Design Festival website.
