Property Of The Week: 11 Alford Street, New Farm, QLD
Inside this airy residence nicknamed ‘the lighthouse’.
Inside this airy residence nicknamed ‘the lighthouse’.
The Brisbane suburb of New Farm is one of the most coveted locales in the inner city. Minutes away from Brisbane CBD, Brisbane River and New Farm park comes this light-filled, two-storey freehold townhouse holding 3-bedrooms, 2-bathrooms and a 1-car garage intelligently designed across 205sqm of living.
Here, the home features a unique centrepiece – the atrium – that allows streams of natural light to fill both levels of the home from within and acts as an oasis.
The first floor sees blackbutt timber flooring underfoot that complements the home’s clean aesthetic. Here, the atrium, and open plan living and dining. Adjacent is the kitchen – which sees modern finishes and an extended kitchen bench that leads out to the landscaped courtyard – ideal for entertaining.
Upstairs, the home’s accommodation is found with two bedrooms – complete with built-in wardrobes a bathroom and study nook.
Also here is the master suite, boasting an ensuite, large built-in robes and a private balcony.
The home is nearby to Methyr Village, local cafes and the best of New Farm’s inner-city lifestyle.
The residence is headed to auction Friday 17 September and is managed by Hutton & Hutton Real Estate; huttonandhutton.com.au
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
A new AI-driven account by leading landscape architect Jon Hazelwood pushes the boundaries on the role of ‘complex nature’ in the future of our cities
Drifts of ground cover plants and wildflowers along the steps of the Sydney Opera House, traffic obscured by meadow-like planting and kangaroos pausing on city streets.
This is the way our cities could be, as imagined by landscape architect Jon Hazelwood, principal at multi-disciplinary architectural firm Hassell. He has been exploring the possibilities of rewilding urban spaces using AI for his Instagram account, Naturopolis_ai with visually arresting outcomes.
“It took me a few weeks to get interesting results,” he said. “I really like the ephemeral nature of the images — you will never see it again and none of those plants are real.
“The AI engine makes an approximation of a grevillea.”
Hazelwood chose some of the most iconic locations in Australia, including the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, as well as international cities such as Paris and London, to demonstrate the impact of untamed green spaces on streetscapes, plazas and public space.
He said he hopes to provoke a conversation about the artificial separation between our cities and the broader environment, exploring ways to break down the barriers and promote biodiversity.
“A lot of the planning (for public spaces) is very limited,” Hazelwood said. “There are 110,000 species of plants in Australia and we probably use about 12 in our (public) planting schemes.
“Often it’s for practical reasons because they’re tough and drought tolerant — but it’s not the whole story.”
Hazelwood pointed to the work of UK landscape architect Prof Nigel Dunnett, who has championed wild garden design in urban spaces. He has drawn interest in recent years for his work transforming the brutalist apartment block at the Barbican in London into a meadow-like environment with diverse plantings of grasses and perennials.
Hazelwood said it is this kind of ‘complex nature’ that is required for cities to thrive into the future, but it can be hard to convince planners and developers of the benefits.
“We have been doing a lot of work on how we get complex nature because complexity of species drives biodiversity,” he said.
“But when we try to propose the space the questions are: how are we going to maintain it? Where is the lawn?
“A lot of our work is demonstrating you can get those things and still provide a complex environment.”
At the moment, Hassell together with the University of Melbourne is trialling options at the Hills Showground Metro Station in Sydney, where the remaining ground level planting has been replaced with more than 100 different species of plants and flowers to encourage diversity without the need for regular maintenance. But more needs to be done, Hazelwood said.
“It needs bottom-up change,” he said. ““There is work being done at government level around nature positive cities, but equally there needs to be changes in the range of plants that nurseries grow, and in the way our city landscapes are maintained and managed.”
And there’s no AI option for that.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’