MACQUARIE MALL GROWS WITH STRATAVAULT

Commencing in 2015, the Macquarie Mall upgrade was implemented to accommodate the city’s rapid growth and stimulate jobs and investment. Featuring a huge outdoor digital movie screen, a children’s waterplay space and a giant chess set, the rejuvenated mall is surrounded by a number of revamped outdoor dining areas and feature trees for shade and visual appeal.

Stratavault from Citygreen was selected for its cutting-edge water harvesting abilities, giving the surrounding tree canopy both the water and uncompacted soil that is needed to thrive in a hardscaped, urban environment.

Ben Gooden, design leader and founder of Citygreen, said, “One of the overall intents with this plan was to provide a good, healthy tree canopy for the residents, as part of a brilliant streetscape upgrade to make this a really nice place to be. There is a real focus on healthy trees in this design.”

Mark Wilson, Senior Project Manager of Infrastructure and Environment at Liverpool City Council, agreed, saying, “Trees are essential to revitalising the centre of any city to bring back that green that we were lacking. It’s acting as a catalyst for encouraging, not only businesses, but also the public to come back to Macquarie Mall.”

As Macquarie Street Mall is a commonly used space, the design strategy was to continue the components that work successfully within the mall and rearrange them to provide a unique and dynamic new space. One of the fundamental components of this was to provide sufficient shade. With this in mind, Stratavault was utilised as one of the most effective products of its kind on the market. Mark Kuhn, Director at Urbis, stated, “We’re familiar with the success of [Stratavault] from projects that occurred over 10 years ago. So we were very keen to use this in an urban environment.”

The mall will be lined on both sides with 70 trees, which will enhance the overall look and atmosphere of the mall. The majority of the trees will be deciduous, allowing for the sun to filter through in winter, and providing ample shade in summer; this is thanks to the continues root growth provided through the Stratavault system. This will also ensure the trees will maintain high health throughout the mall and provide irrigation within the trench and agricultural drains to ensure sufficient drainage.

As much water as possible will be captured onsite and discharged into the surrounding drainage system, integrated through the tree alignments through the mall. The water run-off will be directed to the trees, which will be captured via the Stratavault cells that lie below the surface. “Water harvesting has been around for the last 10 years or so and it’s just integrated into everything that we do. What we wanted to do was try to be responsible,” Kuhn explained.

The Stratavault system is made from 100 percent recycled polypropylene and provides exception sustainable benefits. “Every project is removing tons of industrial waste in landfills,” stated Gooden. “The public are becoming more and more aware of the benefits of healthy trees and, at the same time, the cost of this system is decreasing. So now what we are seeing is projects no longer with city councils only, but also with big stores and shopping centre car parks implementing the system.”

The Stratavault system implemented at Macquarie Mall will give back to the community, not only with the sustainable benefits that it provides, but also with all the added amenities that it offers. It will help to create a thriving street market that will attract the community back into the CBD.

To see this amazing project at work, check out the video below.