Big ideas come together to find ultimate Ultimo

BY OLIVIA STANLEY

Students, entrepreneurs and community leaders gathered at the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo on Tuesday night  to showcase solutions to local sustainability issues.

The venue played host to The Greenhouse, a monthly event exploring sustainable problem-solving, along with first year students from the University of Technology Sydney’s Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) program.

The Greenhouse project’s co-founder, Murray Hogarth, described it as “Sydney’s place to network on environmental and sustainability issues.”

“I think sustainability is a lens for all of the main challenges and opportunities for an area in the 21st century. It’s essentially about economic, environmental and social issues, and not trading one off against the other,” he  said.

Issues such as hostility of the visual environment, lack of community dialogue and absence of green spaces were examined by the university students, who focused on generating creative fixes.

One group proposed covering the bridge over Darling Harbour (carrying the multi-lane Western Distributor freeway) in LED panels to make it ‘disappear’. This would connect the experience of the harbour precinct with Tumbalong Park, the BCII students said.

The team conducted fieldwork to identify problems with the popular tourist space.

“We actually timed the space, the time it took for people to walk through the park area as opposed to underneath the underpass, and we noticed that people were just speeding past that area, instead of enjoying the environment and communicating with others,” said team member Hannah Tavener Hanks.

“We found that an LED screen was a very simple solution technology-wise, but it was adaptable” said Monique Liwanag, another team member.

The panels would display natural environments like a cloudy sky, or exhibit artwork.

“It’s bringing nature back into this concrete jungle” said Bianca Raviraj, also part of the team of first-year students.

The group hopes to expand the project’s planning phase to make it a viable possibility in the future.

The Greenhouse continues on the third Tuesday of each month at The Junction Café, part of the Powerhouse (greenhouse.org.au).