Monash City Council: Eaton Mall
Posted under: Eaton Street Mall is situated between Atherton Road and Portman Street in Oakleigh Village. It has been a suburban pedestrianised street for over thirty years, but was identified as a high priority for rehabilitation and rejuvenation in a public space enhancement study.
The project was jointly funded by Monash City Council, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Department of Planning and Community Development and Melbourne Water. The Eaton Mall Enhancement project is a highly innovative and significant initiative in liveable public places. This project is aimed at supporting social, economic, environmental, and cultural development for Oakleigh Village through use of best practice engineering principles including:
Safe, connected and accessible public spaces
- Psychological calming of traffic using “Naked” street design techniques
- Pedestrian, cycle, and child friendly places
- Extensive environmental engineering and water sensitive design treatments
- High quality sustainable and durable street furniture, lighting and finishes
- Supporting council initiatives for economically vibrant precincts
- Improved outdoor retail trading and public amenity for community benefit
- Promotion of public art and sculpture
- Encouraging a healthier crime free environment through CPETD (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design)
The project is an excellent example of teamwork and collaboration across internal departments and disciplines throughout the design, construction, and maintenance phases.
Design Approach
Designed and managed entirely by the City of Monash project team, the Eaton Mall rejuvenation project design commenced in 2010 with a construction start in June 2012.
The design vision is based on the street being treated as a community room. The rejuvenation project builds on the strengths of the human qualities of the village to create a robust, vibrant, and liveable setting for people. The design response allows for sustainable economic growth and tourism through highly innovative evidence based and human centred design. This includes a series of highly accessible, connected, and multi use public spaces.
The economic vision for the project seeks to enhance commercial yield through the promotion of multi cultural branding and quality place making. This has been achieved by stimulating activity through the strategic placement of community gathering places, enhanced pedestrianisation and connectivity and the provision of quality public spaces to attract private investment and mixed use developments into the future.
Branding the Oakleigh activity centre as a village precinct is pivotal to this vision.
The importance of creating improved outdoor retail trading space to encourage visitors to stay longer in a vibrant living street is essential in the support of council’s quality retail and commercial initiatives.
The design actively promotes a safer walking and cycling experience through the adoption CPETD (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) by de-cluttering the space and improving pedestrian lighting, the outcome enhances facial recognition and psychological comfort, and thereby provides for a safer night time street environment.
The project celebrates the existing culture by providing a more functional and aesthetically focused, environmentally sensitive public environment. The design subtly references southern European influences through the use of hard and soft landscaping, custom street furniture, public art and architectural lighting.
Innovation
- Structural Engineering:
Elegant and efficient design to maximise use of renewable resources such as timber. Low life cycle cost of materials such as stainless steel and sustainably sourced hardwoods. Minimising wastage by utilising materials that are recyclable in the future.
Lighting/Electrical – Optics, colour rendition for optimum human phycological compfort and safety. Energy efficient lighting including cospololis lamp and LED technology.
Light Poles – Custom engineered stainless steel tapered light poles to minimise maintenance and enhance the architectural aesthetic. Each pole type has 2 access hatches to allow access to controllers and power supply points throughout the Mall.
Custom Shade Structures – Engineered to architectural design, with concealed drainage and wiring through structural columns to maintain the desired architectural aesthetic.
- Civil Engineering –
Stone pavement on compactable sand base, allowing cost efficiency and for minimal disturbance of existing sub base. Permeable pavement was adopted to allow storm water to infiltrate the sub base and water table to assist in the maintenance and health of a high quality green streetscape.
Arborgreen Strata Cells were used to provide an engineered and stable root environment to the street trees, protecting and allowing services to pass through the tree root zone. They are also able to support a class C loading on the pavement.
Custom tree grates and guards: Mild steel with accelerated oxidised and patterned surface. Cost efficient, low life cycle cost, and maintenance friendly due to separation of oxidised mild steel to prevent staining of stone pavement. Engineered to allow a class C loading.
Custom engineered infill pit lids to facilitate matching of service covers to the stone paving.
Trench drain – capturing storm water runoff, rain water from verandah canopies and public shade structures to irrigate street trees. It also delineates the public space thoroughfare with a stainless steel R12 slip resistant trench grate.
Inspection Point Markers – Use of innovative stainless steel disc markers on flexible stone pavement to identify inspection and access points to current drainage point and future electrical service points and water tap-ins.
Recycling of waste materials, including stock piling and re-use of crushed rock, brick pavers, steel light poles and street furniture.
- Environmental engineering:
An innovative environmental and water sensitive design has been developed for the project, including active and passive rain gardens, storm water harvesting and treatment, rain water harvesting, and permeable paving.
- Landscape:
Use of drought tolerant trees and plant species for all understorey and street trees
Water Sensitive Urban Design techniques employed in conjunction with environmental engineering design.
Sustainable Design Elements
The following sustainable initiates were adopted by the City of Monash project design team in the completion of this project:
- Advanced street trees to provide summer shade and access to winter sun light.
- Improved bio-diversity and habitat, as well as mitigating urban heat island effect.
- Strata cell root barriers made with re-cycled content, allowing for root protection and growth whilst maintaining a Class C pavement loading capacity.
- Energy efficient Philips ‘Cosmopolis’ lamps in Bega fittings for street lighting and LED architectural lighting.
- Active and passive rain gardens to treat storm water runoff, improve water quality, and to provide passive irrigation of trees and gardens.
- Extensive redirection of rain water that is collected from verandah canopies, public shade structures, and ground water runoff distributed through trench drains used to irrigate street trees.
- Use of permeable stone paving base and timber decking areas to sustain the street trees.
- Use of low life cycle cost and sustainable materials, including stainless steel and sustainably harvested hardwoods.
- Provision of bike bollards to encourage cycling and active transport for locals and visitors.