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This exhibition scheme, intended to provoke discussion and debate about the future of Sydney, projects a frighteningly plausible scenario for the year 2050. In this scenario, the world is dealing with an ongoing environmental crisis.

 

The rising sea level has led to population displacement and a mass movement of climate refugees, and Australia has resettled large numbers of people from now-drowned islands in the Pacific. In this situation, the private vehicle has been banned entirely from centre of Sydney. In a city where roads are no longer needed for cars - both moving and parked - an extensive and surprisingly spacious network of interlinked, linear sites are made available for new infrastructure, housing, and institutions.

 

This scheme proposes a series of tall, thin, strip buildings to run down the centre of what were formerly roads - with varying sectional width depending on the width of the street, and therefore a rich mix of housing types and affordabilities. Apartment buildings are seven or more storeys in height, with apartments sharing a common roof garden. The wider streets are infilled with new hospitals and schools. Underground and multi-storey car parks are freed to be reused as water harvesting facilities, waste management plants and hydroponic farms.