Saturday, July 16, 2022

Reserve within Barry Ave, Leonard St, Hector St, Cleary Ave Mildura, Victoria

Classic space with no signage, not even recognised on google maps as a public space. I happened on it completely by accident. As you can see, perfectly serviceable but no investment other than cutting the grass. See it on google maps here.






Sunday, February 20, 2022

Miranda Place Playground, Melba, A.C.T.



This is a beautiful, very hidden reserve on a slope with some play equipment (see it on google maps here). Not much more to say but without wishing to sound awfully twee, the awfully twee review on the google maps page for this park that suggests its 'trees and bushy gardens' make it feel 'like it has fairies hiding nearby' has got it pretty right. 

Above - the entrance from Wallace Place. A classic internal reserve entryway, you don't really know (unless you have a map/local knowledge) what you are walking into, until you do it. 

Above - the entrance into Miranda Place. 

Melba, the suburb, dates from 1972; it's technically part of Belconnen. 

Thursday, February 10, 2022

L. Sonck, unrealised plan for Töölöö, Helsinki, 1898

This reproduction of Lars Sonck's second prize-winning entry for Töölöö appears on page 373 of Helen Porfyriou's 1990 thesis Scandinavian town planning from 1900 to 1930 and the contribution of Camillo Sitte. A less clear representation of the same plan which however covers more of its area appears on p. 130 of Lars Sonck: 1870-1956, architect published by the Museum of Finnish Architecture possibly in 1982 (the layout is very complicated). This is the part of the plan I'm interested in of course:

I gather Sonck was somewhat beholden to the ideas of Camillo Sitte, at least for a while, and he justified his plan on that basis. These two blocks clearly contain something within them, the left block probably has a church or some kind of statue, the right one seems to be just a dog-leg pathway with perhaps what was later called by Patrick Geddes a 'street room'. You'll see in the first picture there is something similar to the south of the left block. 

Thursday, January 6, 2022

munksnäs-haga/munkkiniemi-haga


'The first garden city experiment in Finland was Eliel Saarinen's Munkaniemi-Haaga plan of 1915, but it was so much ahead of its time the owner of the estate did not dare to carry it out'. Leo Aario, 'The original garden cities in Britain and the garden city ideal in Finland.' Fennia 154, 1986 pp. 157-209 (p. 157)

The image below (original here) is a 2017 visualisation of the plan. Apparently the buildings 'are imaginary, but the street lines follow Huopalahdentie and Munkkiniemi park road.'

I can't tell what, if anything, in this plan constitutes an internal reserve but I suspect that the majority of the plan is apartment blocks (with interior courtyards) and some low-rise housing at the bottom and a lot more at the top, with a few genuine internal reserves dotted throughout. 

Kabbera Central, Kelso, NSW

Look at it here.  Kelso is essentially a suburb adjoining the regional city of Bathurst but it has an identity greater than mere adjacent su...