Course Coordinator
Yohei Omura
Urban Creek Landscape – Relational Space for Agency
The Norman Creek catchment, located near Brisbane’s inner city, stands as the city’s most urbanised creek, characterised by complex flood risks. The Great Flood of 1974 revealed the limitations of post-war flood mitigation based on artificial structures. Since the 1990s, community-led initiatives have consistently worked towards the rejuvenation of its waterways. Today, under the pressure of further urbanisation and densification, the catchment has become a focal point for rapid population growth and intensive redevelopment. This shift presents a unique opportunity to envision communities defined by a more intimate engagement between urban life and ecosystems.
The creek environment encompasses multiscalar spatial dimensions—from local vegetation to regional hydrological cycles—while simultaneously operating on its own temporal rhythms. Historically treated as an urban periphery, the studio aims to redefine the creek as a strategic anchor. It explores incremental urban development schemes that mediate the spatio-temporal dynamics of the creek with the complexities of everyday urban life.
In this studio, we conceptualise the creek landscape as a field of networks where actors, humans and non-humans (nature, objects, technology) shape one another. By synthesising diverse media to map networks of the past and present, students will analyse transformations and envision a future network that fosters richer interactions among diverse actors. This involves identifying pivotal nodes within the broader catchment and proposing tactical sites, programs, and spaces.
The studio proposes a Relational Space which offers opportunity for actors to find agency.
