This is our submission to the City of Sydney for a New Century Garden – an urban space and landscape proposal involving the reinterpretation of a Chinese garden by creating two distinct zones:

- a new hard landscaped urban space, created by a framing series of progressively shrinking moon window ‘veils’ that act as giant screens available for customised light projections according to the event

- a new soft landscaped green garden space, away from busy Ultimo Road and accessed via the smallest moon window veil

The proposal seeks to contrast the congregational Chinese outdoor experiences of hawker food stall freneticism with the tranquility of a traditional garden. It uses two motifs as repetitive elements to compose the design:

- the chinese character for person – ‘ren.’ The shape of the character is beautifully elegant, easily recognisable and reductive in form. As a built form, it has two splayed ligatures that allow for the structural distribution of load, as well as a confident rising gesture that may be used to display signage as a wayfinding device.

- the moon window – another recognisable element in the Chinese landscape idiom, this moon window is used as a facade to Ultimo Road to define the beginning of the site (referencing the neighbouring heritage through maintaining parapet heights), as well as define the outdoor rooms and the progression south west along Thomas Street towards the tranquil garden.

This was a collaboration with Michael Darmadi, graphic designer (and my cousin!) working in Sydney. This has been submitted to City of Sydney, and we await feedback from the jury of whether we have progressed to Stage 2.