Engaging the past: Dyeworks Park

Dyeworks Park, in Melbourne’s innercity suburb of South Yarra, emerged from a timely combination of opportunities: inner-suburban post-industrial rejuvenation, a dynamic social context and a good budget from a supportive local council with federal government funding. It might easily have been a well-planted space of superior materials, but the outcome achieved much more than this.

The design’s unusually bold geometries and extent of colourful hardscaping, along with integrated custom furniture and play elements, set it immediately apart from any local park of similar scale – possibly of any scale in Australia at the time. The 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics had excited landscape architects around the world with its