PROJECT:

LOGANLEA NEIGHBOURHOOD CENTRE AND COMMUNITY PARK.

Cost: over $250,000
Time Span: over four years

COMMUNITY:
Loganlea Suburb and Public Housing Area.

INITIATORS:
Loganlea Friends and Neighbours Association Incorporated.

PARTICIPANTS:
Loganlea Friends and Neighbours Association Incorporated.
Loganlea Residents and School Children
Logan City Council.
Department of Housing, Local Government and Planning.
The Australia Council.
John Mongard Landscape Architects.
Dennis Magee Artist.
Queensland University of Technology.
Wacol Detention Centre.

CONTEXT. local housing participation officer, the

Loganlea is a disadvantaged outer suburb
of Brisbane City with poor physical and
social services and a lack of community
focus. Like many areas targeted for public
housing on the fringe, it has suffered from a
lack of integrated planning. Single mothers
are left stranded during the day by poor
public transport and during the night by
lack of lighting and footpaths. No places
existed for people to come together prior to
the creation of a Neighbourhood Centre.
Children play in run-down parks and
drainage ways. There are few physical cues
which express the cultural nature of the
suburb's community.
APPROACH:
A small group of women from adjacent
streets in Loganlea banded together to
lobby for funds to create a gathering place
for the community. They formed The
Loganlea Friends and Neighbours
Association Incorporated and fought over
several years to gain funds and support to
build a neighbourhood centre and
community open space.
Raffles and cake stands at local shops were
used to raise funds. Through the help of the
group applied for CEAD funding and began
a co-design process facilitated by a
Landscape Architect and an Artist.
The Landscape Architect (John Mongard)
lectured at the Queensland University of
Technology. The graduate students in
Landscape Architecture provided research
and workshop support to the group in
exchange for hands-on experience in co-
design. This exchange continued for a
period of six months.
The project was approached as an active
collaboration between Artist, Landscape
Architect and community. Central to our
philosophy was the concept of healing the
neighbourhood, and building wholeness in
the area through a multi-use and central
communal place. It was important that
richness was created in this bleak suburb,
and community art would be a vehicle to
achieve this. Art would be integrated into
the local landscape and generated by
local people.
EVOLUTION:
As designers, we were asked to facilitate a
co-design process similar to that of Stanley
King's text, and to build people's visions into
the creation of the neighbourhood centre
and the parklands.

Logan lea Neighbourhood Centre and Community Park

John Mongard Landscape Architects
Whilst it was difficult for the neighbourhood
group to at first understand the process and
to let outsiders into their hard fought
neighbourhood project, a slow trust
developed and the designs began to
evolve.
A co-design process involving a series of
four workshops was enacted. These design
orientated sessions allowed us to progress
from general identification of needs,
through to detailed design by the
community for specific spaces. Seven
detailed outdoor space briefs were
developed. Students from QUT responded
with sculptural ideas for the grounds, and
the designers incorporated all of these
elements and developed a masterplan. The
Artist had continuous on-site presence to
develop community art elements and the
Landscape Architect administered
construction.
The co-design process took the Landscape
Architect double the time and fee
allocated by Australia Council funding,
despite the assistance of 15 University
students. In the early stages I had to justify
less than normal hourly rates to people who
were juggling to make ends meet or to give
voluntary time. In such a context, a
Landscape Architect has to give more for
less if one is committed to addressing the
lack of equity and design in the outer
suburbs. This is probably why few designers
are working in these areas.
As the landscape works began to be
constructed and the project continued, it
was realised that landscape design was a
more complicated process than the
community had originally believed.
The Neighbourhood Group ran the Centre
by voluntary support and had one member
funded as a community officer for 6 months.
Lack of ongoing funding by local agencies
may threaten the foothold established by
these women in the Loganlea Suburb. What
has been achieved is a place in the
neighbourhood that has wonderful
gardens, and series of fun and surprising
sculptures on fences, paving and in
gardens. Most importantly, a process of
communal gathering and sharing has
begun.
Logan lea Neighbourhood Centre and Community Park
John Mongard Landscape Architects
EXPRESSION.
The project has helped in creating a sense
of place in Loganlea. Hampered by lack of
funds, lack of active Council support and a
community suffering from low sense of
expectancy, the Neighbourhood Centre
has begun to make a physical and social
difference.
The physical planning was constrained by
the need to utilise and recycle materials.
The building was created prior to the co-
design process, utilising local trade and
labour including prisoners on day release. It
is a well built but utilitarian structure. The
building limited the landscape and artistic
possibilities of the site, however it must be
accepted in these contexts that one takes
what one can get.
The masterplan aimed to enliven the
building and its muddy grounds, to create a
centre which fitted its neighbourhood, whilst
also bringing new colour and face.
The true innovations of the project are
about the recycling of materials and the
use of local people's energy and talents.
It is a truism that great things can be done
when there is good support and money
available for such projects. It takes great skill
to create beauty and richness out of very
little.
As an example, it was decided early in the
project that a fence was needed. The local
authority suggested a full sized wire fence
around the perimeter to prevent possible
vandalism. We decided that this was not
the right face for the neighbourhoods first
communal place. Arising from various
workshops, an idea about a flexible,
sculptural fence took seed.
The Loganlea Friends and Neighbours
Association skilfully acquired a truck load of
disused electricity poles. The fence was built
using these poles and located in a weaving
line through the open spaces, thus helping
to break the geometry of the building.
Dennis Magee worked with the local high
school students on the site and in the
classrooms to create pole top sculptures
and faces. Primary school students made
triangular panels to embellish the fence.
Children on holidays were invited to tile
making workshops and a cluster of games For Further Information Contact:
and puzzles were installed into the John Mongard
verandah as part of the tiled floor. John Mongard Landscape Architects
Ph: (07) 3844 1932
The university students made models of the Email: mail@mongard.com.au
possible play elements based on another
children’s workshop. One of these models
became a built project: a jumble of huge
boulders cradling two sandpits and
dissected by a meandering waterway,
flooded with the aid of a built-in hand
pump. This hugely popular feature within the
child minding space was thus created.

RESPONSE.

The Loganlea Neighbourhood Centre was

built and established over a period of over
three years. Currently we are trying to build
the play island in the drainage problem
area that has been donated to the Centre
by the Council.

The Loganlea Friends and Neighbours

Association have lost through time, some of
their key and energetic people. A
Neighbourhood Centre which does not
receive ongoing support and administrative
funding is only as strong as its community.

The latter stage of the project involving the

upgrade of the community park has been
drawn out through lack of funding.
Cultural developments in the outer suburbs
peter out when government support runs
out, however the reality is that Australian
society does not have the robustness and
long term networks that other places have
developed over time. Communal life in the
suburbs has to nurtured in pragmatic as well
as spiritual ways because it is an uphill
struggle in subdivisions which are planned
and built with individualistic rather than
communal lifestyle visions.

Landscape Architects have currently no

conventional processes in place to deal
with the co-design process. Those of us who
choose to work with communities in places
such as Loganlea, have had to invent a
way of working and must reconsider
attitudes about what constitutes a
professional, and what is a client.

Logan lea Neighbourhood Centre and Community Park

John Mongard Landscape Architects