Fusion

Over the past decade, the rates of employment in cultural industries and manufacturing have plummeted significantly. This is due to a shortage of creative spaces in close proximity to the city centre and affordable housing for local artists and cultural workers. As fewer people are able to access cultural infrastructure, fewer people feel that arts and culture resonate with their experience or values. This is alarming as there is a strong correlation between active cultural participation and wellbeing. So, what if these industrial areas were converted into spaces for the cultural industries to live and work? My design strategy for the Bays Precinct aims to establish a new and revitalised cultural landscape which acknowledges the sites richly layered industrial history, whilst providing support for those in the cultural industry. Through establishing residencies, informed outdoor gallery spaces, and a range of programs which adaptively reuse the current White Bay Power Station, local artists and community members can have ownership over their spaces which support and celebrate artistic expression in all forms. Equally central to the strategy for the Bays is Brownfield Remediation. This focuses on healing and decontaminating the site through phytoremediation processes, which prepare the site for an increase in canopy cover and rewilding, to regenerate a series of resilient and biodiverse ecosystems on site. Fusion envisions the interweaving of these ecosystems and urban art installations across time, to form a unique cultural and ecological landscape for the Bays into the future.