reimagining Birarunga after 50 years

The Ian Potter Center at Federation Square in Melbourne is located on the banks of the lower Birrarung River, the Yarra River. As part of “Reimagining Birrarung Design Concepts for 2070”, a river of ideas, images, objects and stories flows into the gallery until 2 February 2025.

In this bold and different exhibition, we listen to traditional owners and delve into the imagination of eight of Australia’s most innovative landscape architecture studios. Considering “possible” and “preferable” futures, this exhibition presents the river as a complex, diverse, interconnected ecosystem that nourishes our health and is essential to human and non-human communities.

Urban rivers are being rethought internationally. In Australian cities, where major urban rivers are often estuaries, waterway and wetland issues are inseparable from colonization and urbanization. The fate of these cities as the climate warms is tied to their rivers.

Melbourne was founded in 1835 on the lower Birraranga River, where salt water from Port Phillip Bay flows about 10 kilometers upstream. Metropolitan Melbourne now dominates and influences the landscape of its downstream region.

Rivers are a country

Upon entering the gallery, we are invited to listen to Birrarung. The voice of the river is spoken by Uncle Dave Wandeen, Wurundjeri Elder Woj Wurrung and Councilor Birrarung. Originally commissioned by the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, the video portrait provides an important transition from the bustle of Melbourne into the contemplative space of the exhibition.

The river is known to many as the Yarra or Yarra Yarra – but this was an 1830s surveyor’s mistranslation of another Aboriginal word, Yarro Yarro, “flows”.

The misnamed river has suffered from separation from its traditional owners and severe environmental degradation.

In 2017, the Victorian Parliament passed the Yarra River Protection Act (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) to protect the river for future generations and recognize the river and its lands as one living and integrated whole. Uncle Dave Wandin is a member of the Birarung Council appointed to work with the elders and communities of Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung to provide independent advice to the government on the implementation of the Act.

Barracco and Wright’s contribution to the exhibition is based on the impact of this legislation. Speculative policy is presented as a historical document from the future in the cabinet of 2035.

Colonial stories

Thinking about legislation in future worlds helps remind us that urban river problems—pollution, stormwater management, and flooding—have a colonial history.

The waterways have long been considered the dumping ground of Australia’s industrial progress.

In my work Aqua Nulliumnon-profit interdisciplinary design and research practice OFFICE, points to viticulture (wine growing) and golf courses as culprits in water abstraction in the Birarung catchment.

Problems arise not only where water is redirected as a resource for the elite, but also where the connection between waterways and wetlands is disrupted by roads, estates and colonial land use. Billabongs are cut off from their sources, and streams are turned into drains. Wildlife such as turtles, platypuses and birds are losing their habitat corridors.

Terra Nullius is well known as a concept that shaped the colonists’ approach to Australia. Aqua Nullius, according to OFFICE, is no less important. Rivers are country and should be respected, cared for and healed.

Look like a landscape architect

By combining ecological knowledge with architectural form, landscape architects often achieve these goals in collaboration with Aboriginal people. While many Melbourne residents and visitors enjoy the results of their projects in the city’s parks and green infrastructure, landscape architects are rarely the focus of exhibitions at major art galleries. This exhibition shows how design projects can encourage us to imagine urban rivers in new ways, using a range of tools that breathe life into possible futures.

At this exhibition we see images, maps, models, flags, plans, animations, graphs and even a single design for the future “guide to biozones”.

Birrarung Catchment by McGregor Coxall projects an animated map at waist level. It shows us the catchment’s past, present and potential future, highlighting the evolution of Birarunga’s lands, health, waterways and its relationship to people.

Presented as a map that changes over time, the tabletop animation shares the rhythm of two screens on the wall: one with a population counter, the other with changes in flow in the catchment. These three elements link urban population growth to disturbances in river flows. With Melbourne’s population expected to grow, the forecast looks to the future, suggesting ways to care for the river through the creation of Great Beararung Park.

What’s good for Birarunga…

Not all rivers are created equal. Melbourne is a river city designed, engineered, built and run around Birrarang.

A short walk from the gallery, rowers descend into the river and lovers hold hands on its banks. Melbourne is Birarung and we can see this as we move around the city. But all cities have waterways and wetlands, many of which are less visible.

Local approaches to urban water care are needed everywhere. And this can have consequences. If we start caring for the small streams and estuaries that are built up and forgotten, we will understand the connections between people, nature, water and country. This exhibition shows that seeing the future requires research, vision and political will.

The exhibition Reimagining Birrarang: Design Concepts for 2070 runs until 2 February 2025 at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Free admission.