Sydney Olympic Park

This is a project that comes from one of our very own professors, Glenn Allen. The Sydney Olympic Park was done through the Hargraves office. As most of us already know the Hargraves office has done several Olympic Parks now. As I am sure the highly developed park lands that are built for any olympic games, the site must be built to become self sustaining long after the games are over. I feel in the case of Sydney's Olympic Park ten years after the 2000 Olympic games the landscape has only just begun to grow into its space. The site is quite large and I feel the best way to truly explore the entire site is by using the well developed bike route that runs throughout the entire site. The site is full of iconic land works that spread throughout the parklands. When viewed from the tops you are given views over the entire parkland. With these largely engineered landscapes you are guided through the site by kilometers of gaben walls that line most landscape embankments, while complimenting the large earthworks giving you the feel that the site was only created for such a large event as an Olympic game. Some of the interesting features I found when passing through the site is how I could find my self passing through large open public space but still feeling completely alone as if I was the first person to ever discover this space, with the path only leading me to a enclosed private space. I also enjoyed that even with the large earthworks there was a great amount of detail that was also put into these landscape features.