In Time with Water: Design Studies of 3 Australian Cities uses design propositions as a research method to interrogate how Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth might adapt their most hydrologically compromised urban land to the demands of climate change and population growth.
About This Book
Water has always shaped Australian cities — through flood, drought, and the radical engineering works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that buried, diverted, and contained it. Now, the very sites deemed unsuitable for development because of their water issues — low-lying swamplands in Melbourne, flood-prone post-industrial land in Brisbane, high-groundwater zones in Perth — are under pressure to absorb large-scale urban growth. In Time with Water takes these contested landscapes as its subject, deploying design studies not as finished proposals but as speculative tools for understanding what a water-sensitive city might actually look like. For urban designers, landscape architects, and planners grappling with climate adaptation, it is essential reading.
Key Features
- 296 pages of design propositions, research essays, and urban-scale speculative scenarios across three Australian cities
- Edited by Nigel Bertram and Catherine Murphy, with contributions from Paola Leardini, Geoffrey London, Daniel Jan Martin, Antony Moulis, Shane Murray, Kaan Ozgun, and Diego Ramirez-Lovering
- Case studies include Melbourne's low-lying swampy areas, Brisbane's flooding river valley, and Perth's deep groundwater network
- Published by UWA Publishing, 2019
What You'll Discover
- How two centuries of hydraulic infrastructure — dams, drains, canals, sewers, reservoirs — have fundamentally altered the hydrology of three distinct Australian cities
- Why the leftover, flood-prone, and waterlogged sites now central to urban densification demand an entirely different design logic to the planned city that surrounded them
- How design processes can function as a form of urban research, generating multi-purposed scenarios that hold dry and wet extremes simultaneously rather than engineering them away
- The specific environmental and historical conditions that make each city's water challenges distinct, and what city-specific design responses might look like in practice
About the Author
The volume is edited by Nigel Bertram and Catherine Murphy, both contributors to its research. The book draws on a broader collaborative network including Paola Leardini, Geoffrey London, Daniel Jan Martin, Antony Moulis, Shane Murray, Kaan Ozgun, and Diego Ramirez-Lovering.
Specifications
- Format: [Details available upon request]
- Pages: 296
- Dimensions: 190 x 260 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781760800468
- Publisher: UWA Publishing
- Publication Date: 2019
Perfect For: Urban designers, landscape architects, and planners engaged with climate adaptation, water-sensitive urban design, and the future of Australian cities under conditions of environmental stress.