We visited Fremantle Port to collect information for our project.
What is the Project About?
Last term in InnovatEd, the year 7 students worked in teams to redesign the Fremantle Port area for our Project Utopia. This was a unique opportunity that we were presented with by Ms Lockwood, a consultant who specialises in urban development, who worked closely with us to help develop our ideas. Project Utopia integrated Science, Humanities, InnovatEd and English to make our ideas the best and most beneficial they could be. To further understand the area we were redesigning, we visited Fremantle Port and collected information and photos. Each team focused on one area of the Fremantle Port, each with a different purpose, and we created vision boards to assist us in showcasing our ideas to guests and parents.
Our Idea
My team created a dynamic plaza. It features shops, restaurants, apartments and office spaces. To make it more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, there will be a bridge that crosses to the other side of the river. Our plaza is a circular shape, which has been inspired by Indigenous Australian art. It will be run solely by hydroelectricity and solar energy, which are both reusable energy sources. My group decided on the plaza because we wanted to create a place where everyone felt welcomed, and we all wanted to make a place that would be attractive to tourists or people visiting the area.
My group created a vision board to visually showcase our idea of Karlup Plaza.
UN Global Goals
As a part of this project, we had to consider the UN Global Goals when ideating and how they could improve the liveability of the future Fremantle Port City. There are 17 goals in total that all work towards making our planet a fairer and more sustainable place. For our plaza, my group focused on the goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry Innovation and Infrastructure, Reduced Inequalities and Sustainable Cities and Communities. To achieve Decent Work and Economic Growth, we introduced an idea similar to SpaceCubed where we build office space that can be rented out to develop small businesses. This helps to support the economy and small businesses to recover from the financial impacts of Covid. In addition, we also chose to make our plaza run on reusable resources like hydroelectricity and solar power, which achieves the Un Global Goal Affordable and Clean Energy. Choosing certain goals as a focus for our project help us to decide what we really wanted to achieve and keep improving with our ideas.
Public Speaking
I have had quite a bit of public speaking experience throughout my school years, and although the skill does come quite naturally to me, I always struggle to remember a script word for word. Therefore, I was quite nervous to present to my peers and adults, as I had to memorise a written script and make my presentation engaging simultaneously. Fortunately, with enough practice, I was able to memorise my script and speak quite naturally when presenting my vision board. I have noticed that I have a habit of doing hand movements when public speaking. I personally believe that hand movements do help you to remember what you are saying and to help your speech flow, but if you do it excessively it will draw the audience’s attention away from the contents of your speech. Throughout the term special guests would visit the college and give us advice, like Paul Garbett, Brad Pettitt, Steven Pratt, Jason Pitman and more. Speaking with them helped me to improve my confidence in myself and my group’s idea when I received positive feedback.
Me presenting our vision board to visitors.
ASC Capabilities
The ASC Capabilities wheel is comprised of 10 skills needed in a person to make a positive difference in a collaborative environment. They come under 3 categories, which are positive relationships, spirited agency, and powerful thinking. Throughout Project Utopia, I focused on developing my effective communication skills. Effective communication is one of the key skills needed to collaborate in a workplace or school environment to get ideas across and listen to other’s opinions and contributions. For example, throughout our project my group consistently negotiated our many ideas to contribute to the vision of our plaza. We all had different perspectives on what we wanted the plaza to feature and what its design would look like, but by openly communicating we were able to combine ideas to improve them. We were also able to decide on how to split the workload, as we assertively told each other what our strengths and interests were. Ultimately, I feel that I communicated effectively with my group to achieve the best possible result for our project.
Conclusion
This project has exposed me to the reality of developing an area. It’s not just drawing buildings and creating them. There’s a lot more to it. We must follow the design thinking process thoroughly and collect information through lots of research. I have also learnt that in order to create a sustainable community, we need to think long-term about the resources we will have access to in the future and the constantly changing landscape and weather. These factors served as challenges throughout the project, but we were always able to overcome them. Overall, I think the year 7’s have been extremely lucky to be given this opportunity, and I hope that many of our ideas will become a reality in the future Fremantle Port city.
My group and our vision board on the morning of presentations.