National design award for Guide Park

THE Wonthaggi Guide Park Playspace has won a 2023 National Landscape Architecture Award.

The prestigious award was announced on Thursday night, October 19 at the Adelaide Festival Centre, as part of the 2023 AILA Festival of Landscape Architecture, a week-long event in Adelaide from October 19-22, 2023.

The Wonthaggi project, which graduated from the regional Victorian awards to the national event, took out the Landscape Architecture Award for Play Spaces

Here’s what the judges said:

“Guide Park Playspace demonstrates the impact of high-quality play space design for regional locations. Designed for a diverse user demographic and including integration with the nearby aged-care facility, it is an exemplar of how play landscapes can cater to a broad cross-section of the community.

“The project shows how play can connect communities to past stories as well as to potential futures. In response to community desires, the area’s coalmining history is recognised throughout the design, with alternative industrial futures also included.

“In this landscape, storytelling intertwines with play, with a minimal and sensitively selected material palette that allows for many imaginative uses.

“Guide Park Playspace is built in Wonthaggi, Victoria on the land of the Bunurong people.”

Project credits are awarded to: Landscape architects - Orchard Design and SBLA Studio, Structural and civil engineers - Deery Consulting, Landscape contractor - Planned Constructions and Photographer - Copper Door Studio.

Bass Coast Shire Council also deserves credit for awarding the contracts for the $1.77 million project, supported by the Victorian Government with a $700,000 grant from Sport and Recreation Victoria and $350,000 from the Growing Suburbs Fund. The new playground opened in February this year and hardly an hour goes by that there isn’t someone playing there.

Local MP Jordan Crugnale supported the application and advocated for the funding.