Federation Square | Karres en Brands landscape architecture

Federation Square, built above a railway yard, it’s a complex integration of cultural institutions, public spaces and commercial facilities. It was built in commemoration of one hundred years of Australian federation. The total project provides around 45,000 m² of ground area and incorporates a new Museum of Australian Art, a square of 7,500 m², a public atrium, a digital and film arts centre, commercial facilities and television studios. The basis of the plan is to create a new urban organisation that can react to new forms of urban uses, while maintaining its relationships with the surrounding metropolitan context. In this way, in the true sense of ‘federation’, highly diverse elements are brought together to form a complex ensemble of the individual and the collective. Instead of creating a controlled enclave, an attempt has been made to build relationships with the surrounding area. The aim was to achieve a high level of accessibility and provide recreational and cultural facilities. Federation Square is not a continuation of the existing urban grid, but a new, artificial condition above the railway which creates a relationship between the existing city and the river. This artificial condition tries to push the traditional boundaries: the new urban landscape is not a ‘left-over’ area but an integrated part of the total plan. Subsequently, the public space is not only the outside space, but just as well part of the buildings and at the same time a street, passage, square, garden, park and theater.