WAYNE RIMMER
INTERVIEW
Wayne Rimmer is a Principal Landscape Architect based in the Christchurch office of Opus International Consultants Ltd – a multi- disciplinary consultancy with over 3000 staff in 91 offices world-wide.
Before he joined Opus in 2006, Wayne had run his own consultancy practices in Australia and New Zealand for 25 years. The majority of his experience has been in the public realm where the importance of understanding both, the qualities of a site, and the aspirations of the community in which he is working, have been key drivers in developing his approach to placemaking.
Wayne’s focus for 2013 has been as a member of the multi- disciplinary Opus/BDP consortium working on the Ōtākaro/Avalon River Precinct project (ARP). As the first of the blue-print projects to be undertaken by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), the ARP will transform the inner city river corridor to a place that is distinctly Christchurch. The ARP will provide an accessible, well connected place that promotes a healthy, ecologically-rich river environment, celebrates the city’s rich natural and cultural history, and will act as a catalyst for vibrant future development and community prosperity.
Where or what is your first memory of place?
Up until the earthquakes red-zoned our family out of the eastern suburbs, our homes have always been close to, or over-looking, the lower reaches of the Ōtākaro/Avalon River.
As such my first memory of ‘place’ extends back to early childhood when the banks of the Avalon were our back- yard, front-yard and playground. Kids of my generation and our neighbourhood have lasting memories of that river, our place - hut building in the long grass, the wide generous banks, the shade and shelter from the numerous trees along its edges, the overwhelming sense of ‘big sky’, a place that was dynamic with the tides and the seasons, and the river as focus for activity – it holds strong memories as the focus of my childhood community.
This river, as my first ‘place’, helped define my early senses and perceptions, and has continued to shape my approach to working in the public realm. Whether in Australia or New Zealand, living adjacent to, and working on rivers and coasts, has been a constant part of my personal and professional life.
What do you think of the term placemaking?
It is a oft-used term that perhaps does not do justice to the complexity of the process, if it is to be a successful one. It could mean a simple design process involving a range of disciplines who design and implement solutions to spaces and places with a range of social and economic problems. At this most basic level, the term placemaking could easily be the simple action of a physical transformation of a space.
However, successful placemaking is based around a more complex process involving listening, understanding, interpretation and integration of existing community values. It is a process that allows a community’s collective thoughts to become an agreed vision. It is this shared vision as a part of the placemaking process that will help to expose, define and enrich a communty’s layers that either previously may have existed and been lost, or perhaps have never had the opportunity to be realised.
When thinking of place, how do you approach the process of design?
The most successful placemaking design process must incorporate a rigorous engagement process that is sincere in its approach and honest in its ability to deliver. It should be a process that encourages values to be shared and promotes community ownership of the outcome.
All designs should start with a brief that identifies the projects success factors – how the project will be judged as successful – socially, culturally, physically, sustainably and economically. Of course the brief must be able to be redefined as the project develops, and as community aspirations are further refined and exposed.
The design process must not only allow for community ownership, but also a strong understanding of the sense of place and site: cultural and heritage values; the exposed and hidden elements of the natural and built landscape; ecological values; opportunities that need further exploration, and constraints that require recognition and solutions; what works and what doesn’t; and identifying the importance of physical and social connectivity.
The design process will also rely heavily on the designers own personal values - intuitive responses based on experience, interpretation, feelings, and their own sense of what a place is and could be.
What do landscape architects need to understand about new zealand to practice here?
Obviously they need to understand our diverse landscapes – how they were formed, and the social and physical influences that have transformed them over time, and how they will continue to do so. But also there is a need to understand our sense of community and community values, our connection to the land, our cultural and heritage values and that, though our nation is relatively young on a global scale, our attachment to those elements that have helped define us since settlement.
Place is not always urban or within a cityscape. At what scale does placemaking begin?
Placemaking begins with a community-of-interest wanting to define their long term aspirations, and then how those aspirations can be realised. Placemaking does not need to be defined by a geographic scale or boundaries – it is more about sense of identity.
It can also be a very personal thing. As such, the aggregating of those personal understandings and expressions of sense of place into a wider cohesive community of interest becomes a very special challenge.
Does community consultation fit into your design process and where does the weight sit...client, user, design process or intuition?
Ideally the weight in a public placemaking process should sit with the community in which ‘the place’ will be vested – a sense of community ownership during both the design process and the implementation and management of the place will usually ensure a successful outcome that will evolve and change as the community changes.
The most valuable abilities a design team can have, if there is sincerity in the placemaking engagement process, is first the personal ability to listen, and secondly the professional ability to transform the community’s vision in to a sound, sustainable, welcoming and exciting place.
Difficulties arise when clients and end users come with different aspirations or weight their ‘drivers’ or measures of success differently. The outcome then will depend on the robustness and sincerity of the process, and the training, skill and intuition of the design team members, their own feelings for the place and how well they can creatively broker solutions.
Do you need consensus to make design decisions?
Obviously - at some level there will always need to be some form of consensus if the project has any chance of long term success – successful projects require a sense of ownership across a range of levels whether it be the client, the design professional, the user or the place manager. Consensus and compromise will often produce a far more sustainably successful result that will be owned by a wider range of the community, than a poorly supported solution that has been imposed.
It’s simple to focus on supporting or easy to sway stakeholders to generate input to satisfy a client’s desired outcome. How do you target consultation?
I don’t think it’s simple at all to sway stakeholders to satisfy a client’s desired outcome. Stakeholders must feel engaged in any design process and have an understanding that they are being listened to. Early in my career in Australia we quickly moved from one-off public “for your information” type meetings to more inclusive and more regular “what do you think/how do you feel” type community gatherings. These smaller scale engagements ensured a more personal understanding of local issues, a greater attention to listening by the design teams, and generally a greater sense of ownership and contribution by the stakeholders taking part.
Consultation became more about maximizing the potential opportunities for wide community engagement. Successful consultation ensured key interest groups were identified early on in the design process, had a part to play in the writing of the brief and were kept regularly engaged throughout the process.
Do you analyze or critique past projects as to how well they function for people and create a sense of place or identity? Is this objective or subjective?
The design process and brief should prescribe what factors will identify a project as being successful. Critiquing past projects involves assessing the completed project against those factors in an objective way.
Objective critiques and a rigorous review process leads to learning and continual improvements in both process and implementation. Ideally it is about raising the bar, not ignoring it.
However the most simple indicator of the success of any place is the amount of use a space gets and by whom – overly complex analysis and winning design awards does not necessarily guarantee a successful place.
How do we make a contemporary sense of place?
If the design process has rigor, the community engagement is sincere and well represented in the final outcome, the listening has been done well, the implementation has been executed to a high quality and the management requirements are sustainable then there is a good chance we will have identified and exposed a community’s sense of place.
If through that design process there is a sense of strengthened ownership by the community, who also appreciate that their place is on an evolving continuum that will always be a reflection of their values and aspirations, then their place will always be contemporary. The spatial dimensions and form of a place may remain the same, but its function will change over time in response to ever changing community aspirations.
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