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When upmarket residential developer John Smyth was planning the second stage of his family companies 700 lot Longyard golf course estate at Tamworth northern NSW, he became one of a growing number of developers discovering the value of public art .
He was looking for something special to differentiate the estate and give its residents a sense of pride, and maybe even add to its financial viability ‘ we wanted a cultural outcome for the people the estate’
Smyth had been heavily influenced by the concepts of new urbanism, which stress community-building and social interaction between residents.
He commissioned public artist David Humphries - the result is a brilliant blue spiralled terrazzo work about seven meters in diameter that forms a plaza and connects with the tail of a water feature that drifts down the landscaped boulevard, signifying a river. The work is Symbolic of the life sustaining qualities of water depicting a diverse range of predominantly freshwater organisms including turtles eel fish made as pre cast terrazzo elements installed into an insitu spiral river flow through the Piazza
Commissioned by John Smyth.
Urban Planner Peter Annard
Landscape design by celebrity gardener Jamie Durie
PROJECT MOVIE