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Disintegration and remediation – shifting spaces from private industrial to public recreational.

This project allows the original use of the site to be remembered / acknowledged as the community and the local ecosystem slowly rehabilitate the area.  The staged remediation is a complex approach, breaking down the barriers between public and private space and allowing a visible understanding of what remediation means.  The community sees the evolution rather than being presented with a final unrecognisable “new” space.  Additionally, the materials are left on site to become part of the system, materially, chemically and structurally.  The old fuel tanks are integrated, not rolled away and put out of sight.

The perception shift that this project involves is quite complex and challenges existing notions of public rights to a particular kind of recreational space.

Site Analysis: Context. The City of Hobsons Bay has long had an association with industry, with a third of the area zoned industrial. An industry with a particularly strong presence is oil refining with both Caltex and Exxon Mobil refineries located in the municipality. As more sustainable technologies become available many of these sites will be adapted to new industries, while some will become redundant. A landscape is proposed for this site which will take a structure-dominated site and manipulate it to a point where the structures begin to become the landscape. Shell Newport Site: Current Visual Permeability. While the site coverage is very low and an impression is given of a regular layout, this analysis indicates that the site is not very visually permeable. Visual Permeability of Site: Tanks intact. Shell Newport Site Layout: Current.  Located at the junction of two main roads, the repeating profiles of tanks has become a form strongly associated with Altona. Stage One Remediation: Red Fescue and Annual Ryegrass. Stage Two Remediation: Corn and Alfalfa. Stage Three Remediation: Faba Bean and Red Clover. Stage Four Remediation: Native Pea and Native Soybean. Stage N : Complete Phytoremediation of the Site. Stage One Phytoremediation: Millers Road boundary with bands of vegetation. Stage N: Phytoremediation complete. View east from Millers Road. Stage N : Phytoremediation complete. View east from Millers Road. Stage N : Phytoremediation complete. View north west across the wetland lagoons. Phytoremediation is a hidden process. To make this evident the tanks are manipulated to represent the disintegration of contaminants over time. Early in the process: retaining the floating tank roof supported on original infrastructure with all or most tank walls removed. Retaining the floating tank roof and tanks walls: the spaces can be used for screening film, projecting artwork, growing mushrooms... Retaining the tanks and removing the roof: a secluded space. Permutations that the tanks may take over time in step with the phytoremediation. Later in the process... Exotic plants are laser-cut from the tanks and placed amongst native vegetation to hint at the ‘unnaturalness’ of predominantly exotic gardens. Visual Permeability of Site: Tanks disintegrating.