Public Realm
Creating memorable places
We create dynamic urban places, unique in design but grounded in local context that people can recognise, participate in and enjoy.
Our designs are considered and creative, with built results that positively influence our changing urban and regional environments and their communities. They are engaging places where people interact and connect bringing together natural systems, technology, biodiversity and amenity.
Our public realm projects vary in scale, functionality and context yet all share a commitment to the highest design outcomes and to positively shape the lives of people and the environments around them.
By seamlessly resolving the project complexities, our urban spaces transform into people places. Our planners, urban designers and landscape architects make new and evolve existing spaces in which people live, work and play. We shape towns and cities across the country.
We recognise the complexity of public realm projects and are well versed in managing the challenges they present. We are equally at ease leading design teams, engaging with communities and translating these voices into coherent landscape outcomes.
Our approach addresses broad spatial framework planning to ensure community placemaking, neighbourhood layouts and design is appropriate to each site and context.
We draw on our depth of knowledge, experience and personal style to set us apart from our competitors. This enhances our approach to negotiation and smooths out project complexities for our clients.
Our services and expertise
We recognise that public projects are complex, and embrace not only the physical, but also the social, environmental and temporal of qualities of each brief.
- Community Building
- Ecologically Sustainable and Climate Responsive Design
- Contemporary Global Social Issues
- Active Transport and Future Modes of Mobility
- Embedded Cultural Expressions, Unique Identities and Community Engagement
- Access and Universal Design
- Public Safety, CPTED and Smart Cities Thinking
- Urban Biodiversity, Tree Coverage and Connection with Natural Systems
- Spatial Activation and Flexible Gathering Places
- Tract excels in the creation of meaningful and layered public places that evolve with time and enhance connectivity.
- Our places endear themselves to communities and foster pride of place.
- We embed environmentally responsive principals, evaluation tools, methodologies and advocacy throughout all project phases, considering impacts beyond the immediate site.
- We evaluate embodied carbon in materials, measure life-cycle impacts of our designs and select trees for climate-change resilience.
- Our urban water management systems support water security, harvesting, retention and detention, infiltration and treatment to achieve hydrological balance.
- Understanding how spatial and circulation patterns can act as key management systems in protecting community health.
- Salutogenic landscape outcomes for public wellbeing and psychological recovery.
- Food scarcity and the potential for decentralised urban agriculture approaches in public projects.
- Beyond existing transport, the modal evolution of personal, commercial and public transportation and their spatial impacts.
- We consider how our public places will necessarily change with the shift to electric modes of transport.
- We listen to community voices – their history, shared memories and traditions and we successfully collaborate with community leaders.
- We work with First Nations representatives and artists to develop meaningful and culturally appropriate public expressions of culture.
- We cultivate First Nations connections beyond immediate project involvement.
- Utilising 2D and 3D digital modelling we test accessibility outcomes across a range of project scales for safety, mobility and compliance with AS1428 (2021).
- Our staff are proficient across a variety of platforms and approaches that can enhance accessibility and universal design outcomes.
- Tract regularly participates in safety in design workshops and assessments to ensure that our spaces are safe throughout the day and night.
- We seamless integrate hostile vehicular measures into our open spaces, whilst maintaining visual transparency for all user groups.
- We combine our knowledge of biodiversity systems and horticultural training to ensure that our designs are ecologically responsive and climate resilient.
- We seek to retain, restore and rehabilitate biodiversity corridors and seasonal systems within each site.
- Employing a range of strategies, our spaces are adaptable from daytime to night and throughout the seasons, promoting 24/7 and year round use.
- We provide adaptable landscapes that can accommodate everyday active and passive recreational use, as well as cultural events on occasion.
Designing on Country
A critical part of our role is to create a strong connection with Country to meaningfully inform our projects.
As planners and designers we strive to carefully shape built environments for the communities they support, making places for living, leisure and work, and infrastructure that supports and connects these places.
The strength of our collective expertise is its diversity, and we recognise that working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is an integral part of ensuring that we implement these principles fully.
We promote the following principles in our Public Realm projects:
- Early engagement with First Nations people in our projects utilising appropriate systems and procedures.
- Respectful development in accordance with Caring for Country principles.
- Engagement of cultural advisors to lead and coordinate meaningful community consultation.
- Commission local First Nations artists to provide genuine cultural insights to place.
