Introduction to Project Utopia
During InnovatED these past two terms we have been working on Project Utopia for Fremantle Port. This Project is a about re-designing Fremantle Port after it moves to Kwinana in an estimate of 10 years. We worked in groups and with our class to collaborate and create ideas that will benefit the environment, as well the people living in Fremantle. Eventually we moved into separate groups in our class and brainstormed ideas onto a vision board. My groups focus was clean energy and entertainment that was sustainable and fun. After that we moved into another set of groups and our focus was transportation. We wanted sustainable and affordable transportation for everyone in Fremantle. After brainstorming different options we settled on a Tram system. With our mixed knowledge of Transport and Sustainability we designed our Tram system on a model and on a digital platform called Co-Space. After refining our ideas and adding more detail we presented our ideas to our class as well as our parents.
Our Ideas and the Global Goals Connected
Our ideas resolved into a sustainable and affordable tram system. This tram system goes all around Fremantle, making travelling around Fremantle very reliable and easy. At the very start of the Project Utopia process my first group focused on sustainability so personally I wanted to incorporate my knowledge of sustainability. We are incorporating sustainability by using solar panels instead of non-renewable energy to decrease climate change and a negative environmental impact.
The Global Goals that are related to our ideas are:
- 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities – This is because our tram system is trying to decrease the environmental impact of transportation, by decreasing the size of most transportation vehicles.
- 13 Climate Action – Climate Action is very important and we wanted to make sure that this system supported climate action. To decrease the amount of fossil fuels created by transportation we are using solar panels instead non-renewable energy sources. The trams will have solar panels on top of them to power them.
- 14 Life Below Water – By using renewable energy, we are decreasing the negative impact of creature that are living in the ocean near the port. Our precious Great Barrier Reef in Queensland is slowly losing its natural reef due to the amount of fossil fuels created. By using clean energy we are decreasing the likeness of this happening to our reefs in Fremantle.
Visiting Fremantle
As a cohort, Year 7 visited Fremantle and got to explore a number of locations including, the jetty, part of the loading dock, and some of the Maritime Museum. Visiting Fremantle gave us a first hand experience of what the Port looked like and the sheer size of it. Getting to explore also informed us of what buildings or structures we wanted to preserve to keep Fremantle authentic. When we visited there were thousands of shipping containers, which took up a lot of space, so while we were there, we took into consideration how much empty space there will be. This is because Fremantle Port is mainly industrial.
As part of visiting we had to fill out a booklet with a variety of different questions for us to fill out. This booklet helped us in the future, to re-fresh our memory of Fremantle and gave us something to work up from.
Vision Board and Information Report
After visiting Fremantle we got put into groups and brainstormed ideas that would benefit the people of Fremantle and the environment. My group focused clean energy and entertainment. Our ideas were a aquarium that supports endangered species that live in the ocean. Our other ideas were green spaces and community batteries. Because Fremantle is mainly industrial we wanted to make sure that there were places for people to have some space and relax. We also wanted to create community batteries in suburbs to make sure we are using our energy to its full potential. After creating vision boards to showed all of our ideas, we presented them to our grandparents.
The next step of the process was to make a detailed report of our ideas which explained everything we wanted to do in thorough detail. This was a source we could relay on when we needed to explain our ideas.
Liveability
Eventually our Humanities subject was liveability which definitely helped to understand if our ideas suited Fremantle. We did research on what liveability factors would benefit Fremantle the most. This resulted in us doing an assessment on liveability. The assessment was us trying to find similarities between a chosen city and our Fremantle Port ideas.
Re-thinking Fremantle
After looking into all the liveability factors we re-thought our ideas for Fremantle in small random groups. We focused on small questions to help us create more innovative ideas. These questions included how to get from A to B?, what kind of entertainment will there be?, is the project sustainable?, etc. This resulted in us changing our ideas completely and getting into groups for the final idea.
CoSpace
CoSpace is a digital platform that we used to present our ideas. It is a detailed 3D model that you can place objects on. We used the background of Fremantle Port as a base for us to work up from. Our idea was a tram system, so we placed cylinders that represented train stations. After placing the tram stations we added train tracks to show where the tram system ran. After finalising the stations we moved on to entertainment in our allocated sections. We labelled each entertainment buildings as well as the tram stations. We also placed buses on the areas that the trams didn’t run. The forms of entertainment we made were Movie Theatre, Parks, Shopping centres, Day care centres and etc.
Model
As well as making a digital model, we created a physical model. We hot glue to scale structures that represented all of our structures. We had to research the scale of Fremantle and our model. After that we cut out the buildings/structures and glued them on. We highlighted the tram stations in Fluro so people new not to design on top on the tram stations. As the physical model was a shared with the whole class and split into 8 sections, we had to work around people.
Presentation and Conclusion
After refining our models both digitally and physically we put together a presentation as a group. This presentation was a detailed explanation of what our ideas were and how we were going to execute them. We presented our models and our speech both to the class and our parents. We learnt our speeches off by heart and resisted our speeches to them. We first presented to the class once. Then when the parents came we had about 6 groups of 7 that we presented to. This meant if we made mistakes the first time we would have corrected them by the third. After every speech we explained the models further so that the parents could have a more thorough knowledge. We also answered all their questions about our ideas.
Overall, the whole of Project Utopia gave us a deeper knowledge of how to design real life buildings and structures, what the cost of living is and how to work through that, and how people live their daily lives. I believe that my group and I came up with great ideas and that Fremantle would be great with all of our designs.
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