chandler flats wetland 

Chandler Flats is a collaboration with Alluvium for the City of Boroondara. The project involves the design of an open space amenity and stormwater cleansing system for the treatment of an existing urban catchment, which in its current form discharges through an existing stormwater pipe directly into the Yarra River.

 

Given the Yarra’s significant cultural associations with indigenous history REALMstudios initiated engagement with the Wurundjeri people as part of the design process to learn of their stories and to gain insight into the histories of the site. This proved to be a generative move in unravelling a number possibilities for the wetland design, engaging with past natural processes and systems in framing and ordering a site narrative and design response.

 

The resultant design is a landscape that engages with; the processes of the River, the billabongs and the site’s geological profiles. Importantly the site narrative continues in referencing the eye of the Long-Finned Eel, symbolically always looking up, through the lens of the captured water, as a symbol of significance to the Yarra and the its traditional owners.