Master plan for Dandenong Civic Centre - Rush\\Wright Associates for City of Greater Dandenong and Lyons Architects)

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Paul Carter's Material Thinking design studio was part of an interdisciplinary team of architects (Lyons), landscape architects (Rush-Wright) who created a new public square for central Dandenong. The square is part of the $290 million Revitalising Central Dandenong project. It opened in March 2014. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Alterations', the ground pattern for the new Civic Square is a translation of topographical, clothing and locally-sourced patterns into a design that reconfigures the local ground as a giant body in motion or choreography. The name refers to the work of local tailors. The project develops and extends Paul Carter's research on how to historicise public space. Beginning with Federation Square (2002) Carter has worked on several projects in which inscriptions reveal the poetic, cultural and material aspects of sites. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The Dandenong plaza won the Australian Institute of Architects (AILA) Victorian chapter Design in Landscape Archicture, Excellence Award. The judges said: 'This remarkable project completed under the Revitalising Central Dandenong urban renewal initiative offers a public square that is truly civic in nature, providing for gatherings, events, diversity, arts and culture. The space could have easily been dominated by the neo brutalist architecture of the Lyons-designed Dandenong Civic Centre and Library adjacent, however the fine grain of its paving design and splashes of intense colour give the square a strong presence that is at once warm and welcoming. The paving motif, done in collaboration with Material Thinking, was created from fabric patterns found around Dandenong and enriches the design with cultural narrative and meaning.'.