Monash University Museum of Art, Ian Potter Sculpture Court

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: The Ian Potter Sculpture Garden is the transformation of a former carpark into an urban plaza within Monash University, Caulfield Campus. The site adjoins and complements MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art), offering spatial and social connections between interior and exterior. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The garden provides opportunities for exchange between the internal program of MUMA and the daily life of the campus. It was conceived as an urban intervention across different scales; the campus, the site and the body. Campus scale envisioned an urban forest, projecting an ideal future place through extending a neglected, but thriving, group of remnant trees. Site scale articulated the ground plane - composed of concrete and gravel - directing the movement of surface contours around vegetation, while unifying the eclectic collection of surrounding buildings and extending the geometry from inside the gallery space. At the intimate scale, timber plinths/benches subtly delineate and allow for individuals or small groups to move through or collect within the courtyard. The work contributes to Harrisson's ongoing research and collaboration that explores the design of public space for a range of human and non-human stakeholders. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The garden makes a significant and ongoing contribution as a central, public hub for cultural and artistic exchange within Monash University. In 2011 the work won a prestigious AILA Victoria Landscape Architecture Award for Urban Design. The established garden was revisited and critically reviewed for the highly regarded magazine Landscape Architecture Australia (Feb 2016) and appeared on the ArchitectureAU website (March 2016).