CEO Martin Rowland
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SUMMARY - Public spaces must deliver more within tighter budgets. - Everyday infrastructure can create memorable destinations. - Practical innovation starts with listening and collaboration. - Jacaranda combines bespoke impact with manufactured certainty. |
The expectations placed on parks and public spaces are growing. They are asked to support community connection, improve health and wellbeing, reflect local identity, respond to climate pressures and create memorable experiences for the people who use them.
Advocacy across this space is louder, policy is more comprehensive and expectations from stakeholders and communities are increasing. On top of all of that, our digital world means the bar is constantly being raised.
So how can the professionals responsible for designing these spaces achieve more with tighter budgets and competing priorities?
The Rise of Destination Infrastructure
Elements such as shade structures, shelters and street furniture are no longer considered background infrastructure, but have become some of the most visible and influential components of the overall design.
Consider the towering Supertrees at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay, which sit between infrastructure, art, architecture and landscape and have become an international symbol of the country.
Or J MAYER H.’s Metropol Parasol which took a run-down central square in Seville, Spain, and turned it into a vibrant destination for locals and tourists attracted to its innovative architecture and the hub of activity it now sits above.
Or the umbrellas of Madinah, Saudi Arabia and Águeda, Portugal – vastly different in scale but neither less impressive in their dual function of providing protection from the environmental conditions while creating a distinctive visual identity.
Public Space Design is Evolving
This presents an interesting challenge for our industry. Public space product categories are largely divided between standard products on one end and bespoke design on the other.
Standard products offer certainty and efficiency but can limit design flexibility and creative expression. Bespoke solutions offer flexibility and individuality but can introduce additional cost, complexity and delivery challenges.
I believe the space between standard products and bespoke solutions is where the greatest opportunities for innovation exist.
Research Must Start With Listening
Through our national Roadshow program, customer meetings, project collaborations and ongoing market research, we spend a significant amount of time listening to councils, landscape architects, urban designers and project teams.
The most valuable insights come from understanding the challenges you are trying to solve. Challenges around balancing distinctiveness in public spaces while reducing project complexity, around the desire for creativity and the need for practicality, about the challenges of infrastructure that has to perform for decades.
Innovation Isn't About Novelty
Our product development process generally starts in conversations, not in a workshop or a boardroom. Your insights have shaped some of our most successful product developments and continue to influence where we invest our research and development efforts.
Because of these conversations, we understand that innovation isn’t about creating something completely new but about finding better ways to solve problems our customers are facing.
Innovation is only meaningful when it is practical and deliverable and creates genuine value for the people specifying, purchasing and ultimately using the space.
Innovation requires more than creativity - it requires engineering, testing, collaboration and a willingness to continually challenge assumptions.
What Jacaranda Represents
Jacaranda originated from a successful custom project developed in partnership with the City of Ipswich which quickly generated significant interest from designers seeking a similar architectural outcome.
Rather than simply reproducing the original structure, our team saw an opportunity to explore a bigger question.
Could we create a product that delivered the visual impact of a bespoke shade structure while providing the confidence, flexibility and repeatability expected from a manufactured solution?
The result of extensive collaboration between our designers, engineers and customers is a solution that occupies a space between conventional infrastructure and fully custom architecture to give designers greater freedom without increasing complexity.
Jacaranda demonstrates what can happen when product development is guided by real-world challenges and genuine market demand.
Looking Ahead
As our communities grow and public spaces become increasingly important, the role of design will continue to evolve. The next generation of parks, civic spaces and community environments will require new ideas, new thinking and new ways of solving familiar challenges.
As an industry, we need to continue challenging ourselves to look beyond established categories and conventional approaches.
The future of public space will be shaped by the partnerships between councils, landscape architects, designers, engineers and manufacturers who are willing to ask better questions and explore new possibilities.
Jacaranda has been a great reminder to me of what research and development means to GX Outdoors: Not innovation for its own sake, but creating better options for the people designing the places where communities come together.
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