GroupGSA joins NSW Public Spaces Charter for best practice design

GroupGSA is proud to announce its signatory to the NSW Public Spaces Charter. This commitment demonstrates our ongoing efforts to delivering best practices in the way we design more active public spaces across NSW.

The Charter identifies 10 principles for quality public space, developed through evidence-based research and discussions with a diverse range of public space experts, which included Natalie McEvoy, an Associate in our Landscape Architecture team. Through her involvement as an AILA committee member, Natalie was invited to contribute ideas which were tested with the community and stakeholders, and closely aligned to the UN Charter of Public Space.

Natalie is a proud advocate for designing public opens spaces, dedicated to achieving innovative, practical, and environmentally responsible environments for our clients.

“Here at GroupGSA we collaborate with our Architecture and Urban Design teams to deliver projects alongside government agencies, developers, project managers and engineers. These projects deliver positive cultural and environmental impact, from single sites and neighbourhoods to entire cities. This includes parklands and plazas, precincts and town centres, skateparks and playgrounds.

I see great benefit in implementing the Charter’s 10 principles and underlying values across our work in a bid to deliver a higher standard of design excellence in the industry,” said Natalie.

The Charter identifies 10 principles can be seen via the diagram below, for more information visit the Practitioners Guide.

The Charter supports everyone in NSW in having access to high-quality public space that allows them to enjoy and participate in public life – so that they can love the place they live. Quality green, open public spaces help create healthier, happier, more resilient communities.

“At GroupGSA we have a responsibility to communities across NSW to design and deliver Successful Places’, through sustainable activation and a consideration to improved public life. This translates through quality local scale public spaces including streets, and active, welcoming neighbourhoods.

Our team develops masterplans and landscape design concepts along with community consultation and delivers construction documentation. We are actively designing places for people and working with local government in the Public Domain – it was a no brainer to align ourselves to the Charter” she added.

As a signatory to this Charter, GroupGSA is invited to join the Community of Practice with other Charter signatories. This presents an opportunity to learn from others and understand how they are embedding the Charter principles in their work, share knowledge and review lessons learnt. This knowledge can then be circulated throughout our practice.

“I am proud to be spearheading this initiative on behalf of GroupGSA and believe these design principles to be authentic and in line with our current design thinking.  Nevertheless, we can now pragmatically integrate them into our work. Moving forward I see these principles as an integral mechanism to track the health of our public space design.

As a Landscape team, we meet weekly to socially review our project and this would be a great opportunity to raise each principle, discuss and share knowledge” concluded Natalie.

For more information about the Charter and its 10 principles please visit NSW Public Spaces Charter or watch the video below.