Sam Fiszman Park

The space between representation and place is opaque, making the possibility of real site specificity difficult. A surveyor’s drawing, a quick site visit, a few panoramas, government overlays, personal distraction and short‐term memory loss all mean that what is pitched for a given site would, at best, only be seventy percent locked into its real nature. The mental distance between office‐based design practice and the site itself could call for a new method, one closer to the ground. Ground designates a place of potentially infinite complexity, and within the ground is the potential for landscape architects to be grounded in relationships that might be the real subject of what they do. The recent plethora of projects around Sydney Harbour, its heads and adjacent beaches could be seen as studies in site specificity, and a newly completed project by 360° and McGregor Westlake Architecture provides an interesting point to discuss approaches and their success.