What is Project Utopia?
Project Utopia was a project we were given for redesigning the Fremantle Port since it will be moving to Kwinana. We visited the Fremantle Port to get a visual of how big the Port is because were had to think of innovative ideas that connect to the global goals so that the area will be a sustainable and liveable place for everyone who lives there, or visits there. We went through many stages of planning, such as thinking of 100 ideas and making a vision board of ideas that targeted a few of the questions we were given, such as:
- How will we get from point A to point B?
- How can the project be sustainable?
- How can we build on what’s special about Fremantle?
On Grandparent’s day, we had to present our ideas and vision board to the Grandparents.
Later, we had to decide as a class what we would include in our design, and where everything would go. Then we were put in groups, and we had to talk about a few of the questions above, and how they connect with some of our ideas. For example, I talked about how active and native greenspaces connect to sustainability, and why we need to include them in our port redesign. We presented this to our parents when they came to school. That was the end of our 2-trem long Project Utopia.
Capabilities
We used many of the college’s capabilities in our Project Utopia process and design. There are 10 capabilities, but I will only talk about four: organisation, problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration.
Organisation
I had to use organisation in this project by ensuring I knew what everyone in my group was doing, e.g., knowing what order everyone was going in for the presentations or what to do each day. It also meant that I had to prepare my speech, and practice it multiple times until I knew it well. Therefore, being organised was key to making sure that I knew what was happening.
Problem Solving
I had to use problem-solving in Project Utopia by solving our problems when deciding where everything would go on the model. When we were doing that, we really wanted to put a bridge in a particular area, but we had to move it because there were buildings in the way. Other problems were that some of the buildings weren’t to scale and that we had to move the wind farms a bit further away from the port because otherwise,c it would be too noisy.
Creativity
We needed to use Creativity in this project to think of innovative ideas we would include in our model. For example, if we just had solar panels on top of the buildings, and nowhere else, it would be boring, so we added solar panels on benches and other places as well. We added offshore wind turbines as well, so that it wasn’t all just based on solar panels, and because Fremantle is a windy place. We also had to be creative by designing our ideas with further detail on Cospace.
Collaboration
We needed to collaborate in this project because we needed to work together to problem solve, share ideas, and work together to finish the model on time. Collaboration was also needed to know what each of us had to do because we were talking to each other. We all did our parts in this project, which definitely made us all use collaboration.