Project Utopia was designed to help us think about a sustainable and livable idea for the Fremantle Port redesign. We were asked to redesign the Fremantle port into a livable community where all people thrive. We were connected to this real-life project through Mrs Lockwood, who is a consultant in urban renewal. She had the opportunity to plan the space for the Fremantle port redesign and submit ideas to the State Government and use our ideas in her planning. My group’s final idea included an open circular green space with cultural trees (inspired by the one’s in Singapore’s garden by the bay). We wanted to incorporate indigenous cultural art so we decided to put the art on the cultural trees. We would have native trees around the green space as well.

Project Utopia teamwork

UN Global Goals and sustainability

The UN Global Goals and sustainability played a big part in this project. Our design was focused on achieving Climate Action, Affordable and Clean Energy, and Reduced Inequality. At first, I didn’t know how we were going to help with affordable and clean energy, but as we went along through this project and as we were trying to figure this challenge, we eventually thought, that our cultural trees with the solar panels on top, will be able to produce that affordable and clean energy for the community to use. This project had us exploding with questions, such as how can we improve the sustainability of this design? What sustainable materials are we going to use? But with more research, we were able to answer all those questions and make this design more sustainable.

ASC Capabilities

The ASC Capabilities are all about the different strategies and skills that would help a group to be efficient and work well together and will help you in any type of work, job, sport, etc. and are great life skills. Some of the ASC Capabilities I developed on this project are effective communication, leadership, and problem solving. I know as an individual and a group we all used effective communication as we were all discussing ideas and sharing information and research. We all contributed to the project as we all participated and shared our ideas. We were also very organised, in that we had it all planned out in what we needed to get done each lesson and we just put our minds to it and got the job done. Making our speech was also a challenge, as we had to alter our speech a few times, which was hard. At times we didn’t know what to replace that sentence, word, or paragraph with, but we used the ASC capabilities to push through those challenges and get it done.

ASC capability wheel
ASC capability wheel

Public speaking

Public speaking was one of the elements in which we got assessed on. I’m not a very confident public speaker. So, having good body language is something I need to work on, as one of the things mentioned in my feedback was that I had my arms crossed over my body which made me look more closed off. Next time I will learn from this and relax and clam down a bit more so that I can focus more on my body language. Apart from the things that I need to work on, I did pretty well with all of the preparation beforehand. I had rehearsed my speech many times over in my head and out loud, which lead me to not having to look down at my palm cards very much. I also used the class time that we had to practice the speech, as well as practice in front of some of my peers.

Group work with one of the visitors

liveability:

Liveability is what makes a place livable and enjoyable. There are 5 factors that define liveability; Environment, Social, Culture, Economy, and Infrastructure, which we learnt in Humanities. When designing the Fremantle Port, we had to think about those 5 factors as they would help make our design more focused and enjoyable and it would suit all the needs of the community. Our final designing made the Port more cultural (with the Indigenous art) and we made the space more social as it’s designed for people to come and hang out/socialise and relax. We also improved the environment on the port by adding more nature and green space.

Re-designing the Fremantle Port was a very interesting and exciting experience. This project taught me lots of valuable lessons such as, problem solving (never giving up and just having a go at finding a solution) and leadership (being a leader and helping my peers when needed), which will be used in the future. I am so thankful for this opportunity, as it was unlike any other project that I have ever done, but the best part was that I got to hang out with my friends and I had a great time designing and creating ideas with them.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-1.jpeg
Fremantle port photo from the excursion
Project Utopia Showcase Day

Thank you 🙂 😀