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ChillOUT Tree, our first modular shade system, has won a prestigious Good Design Award – at Gold level – for outstanding innovation in the Product Design, Commercial and Industrial category. The award is shared by Street Furniture Australia with ChillOUT Hub collaborators – Georges River Council, UNSW and the University of Sydney – partners in prototyping, installing, testing and researching these smart outdoor community spaces as part of a pilot project for the federal Smart Social Spaces program. The Good Design Awards are the highest honour for design and innovation in the country. Entries are evaluated by Australian and international Jurors – including designers, engineers, architects and thought leaders – according to a strict set of criteria including Good Design, Design Innovation and Design Impact. Recognition at the Gold level …

Georges River Council’s partnership with UNSW and Street Furniture Australia has received a Highly Commended Award for Cross Sectoral Collaboration at the 2019 Smart City Awards by the Committee for Sydney. The awards celebrate projects and partnerships that address the fundamental challenges faced by cities, governments, industry and communities in Greater Sydney. The three partners were recognised for their collaboration on creating smart social spaces that improve the amenity and user experience of public open spaces, as well as helping to mitigate urban heat island effects at the micro level. The trio is one of the few teams to win both Round 1 and Round 2 grants from the Australian Government’s $50m Smart Cities and Suburbs Program. The Round 1 project, Smart Social Spaces, investigated how smart furniture can be …

Smart furniture can promote greater community engagement with the outdoors in parks and open spaces, for better health and wellbeing. Since 2016 Street Furniture Australia has invested in multiple award-winning smart city research collaborations with government and universities. Join Street Furniture Australia’s Head of Innovation June Lee Boxsell to hear about the research results and lessons learnt from three key case studies, and the latest street furniture innovations, at the 2019 Parks and Leisure Conference in Perth. Time: 4.40pm, Monday October 28, 2019 (conference day two).Venue: Crown Perth, Great Eastern Hwy, Perth WARegistration: Packages available from Parks and Leisure Australia (PLA). The PLA Conference focuses on the importance of linking parks, open spaces and facilities to health, well-being and sporting performance – with talks and events from October 27 to …

How might we increase community connectivity, enable knowledge exchange and provide flexible spaces to meet, work and play? ChillOUT, a collaborative project by Georges River Council, UNSW and Street Furniture Australia, seeks to answer this question. Cities are becoming compact. With this increase in high density living there is greater pressure on public space to provide opportunities to rest, connect with community and immerse in nature. What are ChillOUT Hubs? ChillOUT Hubs are prototype smart open-air community spaces. Each hub is configured using a modular system of Smart Tree shade structures, street furniture and integrated technology. They feature public WiFi, device charging, seats and tables, smart bins, smart drinking fountains, lighting, planter boxes and artwork. One of the sites – in Mortdale – runs via solar power. Sensors will monitor …

5 Inspiring Stories of Great Public Places: The Project for Public Spaces has added five more entries to its international Great Public Spaces database. In Moscow, 18 lanes of the capital’s ring road have been reduced to no more than 10 at any point to create the Garden Ring, with 13 new public spaces, 20 crosswalks, generous promenades and 2880 new trees. In Vancouver, Alley Oop (pictured above) transforms an underused laneway into a place for play, with areas marked for basketball and hopscotch, seating and tables for comfort and a dedicated clean team. Strangers are seen playing together. In Bristol, Electric Moon is an artwork and low-cost lighting installation designed to help pedestrians and cyclists see each other at a trouble spot on a dark shared path. Historic Burns Court welcomes visitors …

It was a year of collaborative projects, smart technology, smart furniture and smart cities – but first and foremost great public spaces that answered their community’s needs. Count down our top six StreetChat stories of 2018, that were most popular with subscribers. 6. Competitions: Win a Drone and Smart Watch StreetChat subscribers contributed some creative entries in both competitions, but there could only be one winner for each. Luke Cox from Phillips Smith Conwell Architects in Brisbane was named the winner of the android smart watch for his acrostic poem entry. Matthew Moore, also from Brisbane but with HASSELL, took home the DJI Spark Mini Drone for his beachside augmented reality Aria. See the gallery of entries. Matthew Moore’s augmented reality Aria, by the sea. 5. Smart Social Spaces Georges River Council and the …