A Changing Feast

The site for this work is a tiny new park set just behind Victoria Street in Richmond. This district is known for its food – particularly a long strip of restaurants and Asian food stores along Victoria Street – and for its diverse, multicultural population.

The residential area surrounding this park is characterised by a range of small dwellings – workers cottages, medium density housing and high-rise apartments.

A Changing Feast offers the extended families of this local population a spacious outdoor place to celebrate their rich culture of food. In a central, level area of the park, two long, polished concrete dining tables align to make one dining space. The tables are paired with simple timber and steel benches spaced to provide room for prams, wheelchairs or additional chairs brought by park patrons. A ceiling for the dining space is made with a series of laser cut parasols. The parasols are cut with patterns of herbs, such that the pattern of light forms a tablecloth of ephemeral ingredients for a feast. This laser cut ceiling is coloured in a range of greens above to provide a canopy that connects to its landscaped context of small trees and edge planting. The underside of the canopy is bone white in colour, offering a light reflective space for the day and the night, when small lights illuminate the parasols, transforming the ceiling into a perforated lamp.