Outhouse Design - Best in Category & Gold Award

Landscape Design Commercial Open Space

Design Brief:

With the 2011 Census showing that 9 out of every 10 Camperdown dwellings were medium or high density, only a few inner west Sydney residents have been able to the freedom and fun that backyards once traditionally brought families and their children.

The Camperdown Commons was a community revitalisation project and collaboration between the Inner West Council, Pocket City Farms and Canterbury Hurlstone Park RSL Club. The vision was to create a community hub which would repurpose the former lawn bowls club into a vibrant space to create food production, educate and allow the younger generation to get their hands dirty and learn about food.

Food production on site provided the staple offering to the onsite kitchen and dining experience, whilst function rooms offered yoga classes and places of learning. As part of the overall revamp of the site it was requested that play experience be offered and form part of learning and champion imaginative play. 

The brief was broken into key components:

• This tiny allocation of space must ignite the imagination, educate and promote creative, unstructured and safe play
• The design should not represent any traditional plastic fixed play units, but be one of a kind and act as a statement and intrigue for younger visitors
• It must have an interaction with the main open lawn area and invite children to explore the idea of cultivation, production and in some way encourage children to embrace the food ethos connection on site
• It had to be low maintenance to no maintenance, be safe for children to be left with minimal supervision whilst parents engage with the cafe and other site facilities