Tayla’s Lakes 

What happens when the urban growth boundary becomes fixed - when the population continues to increase? Outer city suburb design is a model full of weak points and when most of these suburbs are considered less desirable than their inner-city counterparts you wonder how this model has faced relatively little change and continues to be deployed as Melbourne grows.

Taylors Lakes, a suburb hugging part of the growth boundary and the gateway to the growth corridor of the west. The suburban street scape, a complicated relationship between the public realm of the street and the private of the home. Within these existing conditions lies another method of planning with focus on retention – retention of place, retention of nostalgia.

This project is not a masterplan but rather a master-place, derived through the lived experience unique to this suburb. It questions how far Taylors Lakes can be pushed before it’s unrecognisable and identifies a system for allowing density and supporting it whilst simultaneously increasing the liveability status of the suburb. The framework questions the conventional method of suburb design and master planning by addressing the issue of urban growth using civic amenity and the grand adjustment of the boundary to the suburb edge.