Reading the Landscape activates the stormwater harvesting infrastructure at Sydney Park through a series of sculptural interventions that aim to connect the community to urban water cycles. The artworks highlight the invisible or hidden processes that take place in the biofiltration and wetlands systems throughout the park.

Revealing the water cleansing process

The artwork highlights Sydney Park’s biofiltration swales as functioning landscapes. It exposes and celebrates their raised terraced form and distinct planting palette.

A series of pipe inlets, raised brick aqueducts, embedded terracotta distribution channels and clustered outlet channels are suspended over the water to create pathways alongside and through the existing biofiltration infrastructure. Visual breaks in the planting and raised viewing nodes direct the attention of passersby to the revealed workings of the system.

This early idea resulted in the permanent work, Water Falls.