Home > Projects > Masterplans

VSBA Footscray - Public Realm Design

2020

Footscray

Concept Plans, Planting Plans, 3D Visualisations, Tender Drawings

2022

Small public spaces carry significant weight. When resolved well, they connect people to place, activate underused corners of civic life, and quietly improve the experience of everything around them.

This project centred on a small but strategically positioned public open space in Footscray — sitting at the intersection of a busy childcare centre, a vibrant arts precinct, a carpark, and civic buildings. It was a tiny space that needed to work hard: to serve multiple user groups, to complement its surroundings, and to contribute meaningfully to the public realm without overstating itself.

Rather than imposing a complex intervention, we focused on creating a space that felt considered, calm, and genuinely useful to the people passing through and gathering within it.

A grouping of serpentine seats, positioned above bluestone paving, forms the heart of the space. The seating arrangement encourages pause and social interaction, offering a resting point within what is otherwise a busy and transient precinct environment.

Newly planted trees on both sides of the area provide structure, scale, and the long-term promise of canopy cover — connecting the hard landscape to the surrounding streetscape and softening the interface between buildings, movement, and open space.