chum park - Deep City

location: Golden Square, Bendigo

re mediating an ex mining site in the city of Golden Square, Bendigo for future residential development.

The brief was to introduce a new building typology to Bendigo and to address the underground condition of our site. Overlaying collected GIS data, and historical photos as reference, I was able to locate the known mine shafts on the Chum site. By knowing the location of these shafts, it gave me a clue and foundation as to where I could and could not build. Weaving environmental strategies and bio-remediation techniques into the project.

The project’s first stage would involve the natural remediation and cleansing of the contaminated soil on the site. Contamination is higher around the areas where mine shafts are located, and this influenced the placement of courtyards which aimed to provide communal gardening and gathering points for residents of the future residential park, and a means of naturally cleansing the soil. Existing peppercorn trees on the site were kept.

Once the soil was at a point where building could commence, stage 2 could commence which would involve the low rise high density residential units to be built along the borders of thematic courtyards in phase two. The concept was that each courtyard would be planted with different species of plants, and using Chinese temples as precedents, the idea was to curate a journey through the site as the public and residents negotiated their way through the different courtyards around the site. As the Chum site dips toward a gully that runs through the site, the negative spaces created by the topography allowed for the designing of a landscape that blurred the boundary between the residential housing and the watercourse.