I designed about 7 of these Bond Road
-parking connections as part of Conwonga's (NSW) downtown upgrade. They proved very
popular because the sub
tropical climate allowed for extensive commercial utilization of these
oversized passageway's from newly designed off street parking only a few feet
away from the 150 yr old central shopping area. This particular pocket park made
great use of the adjacent wine shop. art gallery and pet shop by having several
small outdoor tables, sculpture pieces with lighting and a cockatoo house
replete with Sam the beautiful (and loud) yellow crested white
cockatoo. Both merchants and shoppers were very fond of this little space and,
with the night lighting I installed, it
always has a lot of activity night
and day. Paving was integral dyed, diagonally scored, earth toned concrete, a
solar powered xerigation system was installed with a power cell on the
roof to your right.
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Two pics in composite format of Sam the
cockatoo's house and the intimate little columnaide portion of the
passageway-courtyard area. Extensive
use was made of broadleaved subtropical plant material, particularly the dwarf
banana (musa acuminata ), chinese fan palm (washingtonia robusta)
dwarf and large philodendron selloum, hanging boston fern baskets (nephrolepis
exaltata ) and much more. The wine and cheese shop, art gallery
and pet shop are to your right. Bits of Lomis Street can just be seen at
the end of the columnade.
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Part of the final presentation to the
developers for the urban upgrade project. Xerigation powered by a solar cell on
the Italian restaurant's roof
was used and all lighting was low voltage indirect down or up lights. Modular
paving had been much overdone in the area and integral colored
earth tone,scored concrete was used at a significant cost savings with much
better long term paving maintenance.
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Selected details from the Bond Road scheme.
Normally my lighting installations are low voltage but the client preferred 120
voltage for the north side of the
planting area that he paid for. A code approved photo cell switch controlled 5
bullet uplights and 3 cannister type downlights mounted to the restaurant's
brick wall. The gourmet wine shop paid for the parrot cage and wine bar and
maintains both. The little outdoor wine stop was a great success which got
a lot of media coverage at the time.
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Caber Street Park
The preferred of two schemes I designed for DeltaGroup's CBD upgrade for
Sebring. The solution hinged on acquisition of 120sm(1200sf) of
property (shaded) that belonged to the the Old Royce Hotel. The busy little park
had public seating, a clock tower, newsstand, poster kiosk, drinking
fountains, night lighting and a new LEED , low volume irrigation system. The
crosswalk upgrade included a new digital based crossed walk lights
and solarblinks
--a new method of alerting drivers of crosswalk locations that is
proving very successful where used.
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A birds eye view of the new park looking
north along 12th Ave.
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A few of the Caber Park Details that include
the 6 Canal Plaza cast iron marine bollards, the 2" sand swept architectural
paving and the curved seating
detail
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Caber Park curved seating detail
Seating panels were factory produced to my specs e.g. radius, material,
etc.--The 117 lin ft of led tube
light has been working for over 6 years that I know of and still going
strong
Wrought iron fence with stucco base wall at
west side of park adjacent to the hotel. A lot of styrofoam relief was used
quite successfully to save significant
money forming this kind of detail up for a monolithic pour. Two right angle
scratch coats were applied over stripped forms, styrofoam detail and column
caps installed, a stucco prep coat and a final color impregnated stucco troweled
on. Painted wrought iron panels were installed last
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I designed several clock tower schemes for
the CP project, all of which reflected the client's preference for painted steel
tube frame solutions with a
specific clock tower manufacturer in mind. The one chosen had a open lexan
cupola roof with a 1.4m classic clock face kit with the tubular bell option.
Tubular bell towers are historic and pretty common features of many European
cities and have a fair showing in the America's and Australia. Because
of the tube package's overall length, part of the fused assembly was inside the
clock housing and part attached to the steel frame at the base of the
clock housing. The tubes are hammer activated, chrome finish with 2 coats
of clear sealer and protected from the weather by the overhead clock housing
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All of the schemes are basically square 2.8m
pads (9x9') close to 11m tall (36') and utilize 203mm steel tubing assembly
which is very cost effective
and, designed correctly, can be especially attractive. Tubing schemes also save
money by allowing for simple, inexpensive routing of services to the
various tower functions (electric, internet, water and gas). The fire and water
fountain scheme has a 1hp recirculating pump with a automatic top up
float valve assembly from a 20mm copper city water service. Exterior cast brass
bell kits are assorted sizes of acoustically fused, hammer operated
and controlled via computer programs of a very wide variety of melody's from
staccato tolling to christmas carols
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The CP news stand was a compact 1.3x1.8m
(4x6') structure that typically dispenses news papers, magazines, postcards,
camera film, aspirin, alka
seltzer, bottled water, cold soda, etc to people moving thru the city. These
vital urban furniture nodes can be surprisingly difficult to get right
when theft,
vandalism and maintenance is taken into account. They are single vendor affairs
that must be well lit, lockable, easy to maintain and look like they belong
in an urban environment.
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I have collaborated for a long time with
municipal engineers in producing more imaginative and efficient street
furniture. One area I have invested a
lot of time has been in advanced techniques in crosswalk and urban street
crossing technology. Anyone involved in this area knows that most
fatalities and serious injury crossing busy streets occur from inadequate visual
communications for both pedestrians and motorists alike. I worked with
Traffic Safety Corp and public works engineers to come up with some of the
latest innovations in this area. The animated cross walk signal holds great
promise for decreasing serious injury and deaths where it is being introduced.
Study after study proves that you need to get peoples attention with moving
visual aids, hence the move to animation and flashing modes. The animation is
produced via flat screen liquid crystal tech, more like your new HDTV
screen does.
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kent mccoy landscape architect
www.kentmccoy.com