Play & Education Projects
Grovedale West Primary School
For this $6.6M school upgrade we proposed an Outdoor Learning Area Gathering Space featuring natural, loose and living materials to encourage interaction with nature to create a variety of spaces suitable for passive play.
We introduced earthworks to create mounds and a rain garden to integrate water sensitive design treatments with play elements with trees, landform, and rocks and a timber boardwalk to create a distinctive and clearly identifiable arrival experience.
We also suggested setting aside part of the budget for artworks by local Wadawurrung artist Gerard Black, and nesting boxes on bush timber poles to improve habitat values.
Greenville Kindergarten Therapeutic Play Area
With clients regularly including children experiencing Autism Spectrum Disorder, the Greenville Kindergarten and Day Care Centre play areas are arranged to allow children to manage their own progress from one play experience to another, with transition spaces between.
The renovation of the play area took advantage of existing site features such as trees to create new play experiences, and introduced new opportunities to play with loose natural materials.
New play elements included a Bamboo Dome, trike circuit, freeform sandpit, vine-covered Catenary Screen, Rope Curtain, raised veggie garden, and balancing boulders through a path of tussock- forming grasses.
Clifton Springs Kindergarten
At this centre we identified a number of opportunities to improve the way the playground contributed to development of movement skills, sensory awareness, and mental and creative stimulation along with safety.
The Concept Plan sought to retain valued existing play elements, and ‘value-add’ new features, such as small spaces for refuge and imaginative play, natural loose materials, and planting. A focus was to renovate the sandpit with rounded rendered walls and add water play, with a hand water pump and ‘waterplay path’.
Funky and Fun Courtyard, Deakin University
Presented with a bland pebbled lightwell, we took on the challenge to create a fun and functional space on a limited budget.
The space has glass walls on three sides, so we created a highly visual space with a repeated hexagonal motif on the rear wall, multi-use Ekodeck seating platforms, and in the use of a range of artificial turf blends on the ground surface. It was even picked up with linework and panels of frosting across the windows to frame the views into the space.
Even when it is not being used, the mix of bright colours and strong geometry creates an engaging and quirky space.
Play Audit, Freshwater Creek Steiner School
Although we were originally asked to prepare concepts for a key central play area, a range of uncertainties delayed the project for a number years. To provide the school with a way forward we proposed looking at the bigger picture instead - we felt what was really required was a playground audit.
We devised a staged methodology that involved a meeting with the stakeholders and onsite assessment of each space/zone/area. This data was input into a spreadsheet and presented to the steering committee, as well as posters of relevant inspirational precedent images to inspire the wider school community.
The project was highly successful in identifying priorities for action, and was very well-received by the school community.
Central Courtyard, Deakin University Burwood Campus
The construction of an overhead walkway improving connection to a new Student Hub provided the team at PMLA the opportunity to reimagine this central space as a cool green ‘natural’ space for the display of public art.
Tall forest plant species turn the walkway into a ‘tree-top walk’ and complement the dominance of the surrounding large buildings, supported by water-sensitive design techniques to recycle storm water.
Cleverly, by diverting stormwater from the walkway overhead into drainage swales below, tree ferns and other shade- tolerant plants were able to be planted.
Careful siting of large sculptures by Brigit Hellier and John Kelly in consultation with staff from the Deakin Gallery, ensured that these works are visible and complemented.
Childcare Centre, Mt Eliza
Existing trees can be an asset - they provide shade, beauty and a sense that the buildings and new landscaping nestle into their existing context.
This project was blessed with a number of beautiful English Oak, Spotted Gum and Lemon-scented Gum trees, and through careful design these trees were protected and retained. The new building, though large, does not seem overpowering because it sits within the leafy bower of the existing tre canopies.
The play spaces also take advantage of the shady spaces created by the existing trees, with woodland-themed elements including a palm-tree grove, generous wood-mulched open spaces, story circles created by simple wood logs and rocks, and cubby houses set into the greenery.
Grounds Development, Hume Valley School, Dallas
The school was able to secure VSBA funding to construct a new campus, and required a landscape that complemented the priority they place on outdoor learning.
PM&A Landscape Architects were asked to be involved, and approached the brief with a focus on creating a playful landscape with a higher degree of design detailing than is often found in primary schools. Elements such as outdoor teaching areas, a rebound wall, sandpits and productive garden areas surround a grove of paperbark trees and climbing frames.
A variety of hard and soft surfaces have been used to provide challenge and variety, and dense groves of trees create shelter and enclosure to cater for small groups to chat.
Campus Design Standards, Deakin University
As an organisation with five campuses, the challenge for Deakin University is to maintain consistent landscape treatments while reflecting the individual character of each campus.
The Campus Environmental Design Standards identifies the particular history, landscape characteristics and design direction of each campus, and provides clear guidance to facility managers and external consultants in the design and construction of outdoor spaces. It defines the style and materials palette to be used across all campuses, and where the ‘rules’ should be relaxed to allow use of bespoke custom elements.
The Standards have become a key tool to minimise maintenance costs, streamline the approvals process and to manage the landscape values of the four sites.
Landscape Character Assessment, Deakin Waurn Ponds
Ten years after a major landscape refurbishment of the Union Green and Delacombe Court, the key central areas of the Waurn Ponds Campus, something was not quite right and PM&A was asked to find out what it was.
After delving into archives to determine the sites history, interviewing key players in its evolution and conducting detailed onsite investigation we identified that one of the main problems was that the vision the designers had for the space was never truly communicated to the maintenance staff responsible for realising it.
A detailed report was prepared that identified issues, suggested opportunities, and recommendations.