Author Archives: Charly Nelson

Site Explorations: A tour of Streets Beach in Brisbane, Australia

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Photographer and designer Charly Nelson takes us on a tour of some of her favorite landscapes around the world. Previously, she visited Parc Trinitat in Spain and BP Park in Sydney. Today, she takes us to Brisbane’s “Streets Beach.”

South Bank Parklands: A tour of Streets Beach in Brisbane, Australia

In the heart of Brisbane is a wonderful public amenity: a free public resort-quality beach. With temperatures oppressing and hot in the humid summertime, a public beach for a coastal city on an inland river is a much-needed and well-received park for Brissies and tourists alike.

The park was established on the grounds of Brisbane’s 1988 World Expo. While it includes remnants of the worlds fair, I will focus my commentary on my jaw-droppingly unexpected encounter with Streets Beach, designed by Desmond Brooks.

(It’s important to note that while Brisbane is coastal, it’s still over 10 miles inland from the ocean. Streets Beach is a completely fabricated beach. To maintain this pristine beach along the inland waterfront, 70 tonnes of sand are hauled in every year to maintain the beach.) Continue reading →

Site Explorations: Parc Trinitat in Barcelona, Spain

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What can you do with a massive traffic circle? In Barcelona, Spain, Parc Trinitat is one attempt to answer that question. Active spaces ring the outside access points while a variety of trees and a grassy knoll form the center of the park. The majority of the park is hidden by the surrounding high speed roadways so that only the tops of the trees and vegetation are visible.

With all the spaces programmed to receive large amounts of use, the park was highly underused at the time I visited. Was this due to the time I was there, or a signal of the state of the site? Continue reading →

Site Explorations in North Sydney: BP Park

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On Sydney’s Waverton Peninsula, BP Park, formerly the home to oil barrels and industrial capacity for the BP Corporation, was transformed into an urban park in 2005. The site welcomes the public to meander through an industrial history and the underlying geology and native plant life. With impressive views of downtown Sydney across the bay, including the iconic Sydney Opera House, this park creates an entre to the water culture for the neighborhood.

The park was created after a 1997 NSW Government decision to transform former industrial sites into public open spaces. From the 1920’s through 1993, the site had been used by BP Australia for fuel storage and distribution. (Take a look at what the park location looked like before). Continue reading →