Reconciliation Place
Urban / Landscape Design, Australia – National Competition Winner, Australian Government
Central to Australia's National Triangle, the winning national competition design was "chosen for its direct and timeless qualities" [1]. The design is vast, intricate, subtle and confronting. A mosaic of 'Slivers' of glass, steel and stone extend across Griffin-Mahony's Water Axis, linking the National Library to the National Gallery. The fragmented, chiselled forms work together to construct a continuous landscape and datum precisely matching the High Court and National Library forecourts. Immersed within, experience is generated by spatial compression and release, and shifts in elevation. Inner corridors reveal inscriptions and sounds, fire and water. At the midpoint, the various passages emerge upon the 'Midden' – a convex landform centred on the Land Axis, paved in porcelain. It is an outward looking, contemplative space: "a nexus from which both axes can be simultaneously, and almost ethereally experienced" [2]. A scallop provides a shaded rest area, while another slice addresses the Parliamentary lawns, creating a podium for events.
'Reconciliation Place presents a unique solution…the complexity, contradiction and continuity of memory…lts form and its meanings provide an alternative to the physical, conceptual and thematic traditions and rigidities of stale commemoration…the layout and themes of this precinct contest the State's hegemony in defining the past [3]...It is one of the world’s most significant public memorials to indigenous history'– Quentin Stevens, Associate Professor, RMIT [4].
1. Jury Statement, 'Design Competition for Reconciliation Place', 2001
2. Christopher Vernon, 'Axial Occupation', Architecture Australia, 2002
3. Stevens, Q & Franck, A, 'Memorials as Spaces of Engagement – Design, Use, Meaning', Routledge NY, 2016
4. Stevens, Q in Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 2020.
5. Credits: Simon Kringas (Design), Paul Tilse (Documentation Assistant), Amy Leenders & Cath Elliot (Competition Assistants), Sharon Payne (Indigenous Representative)
6. Images: Simon Kringas
7. Context: Commonwealth Place by Durbach Block. National Library Fountain by Walter Bunning