Mends Street Piazza (Connect South Project)

The Connect South project by the City of South Perth is an innovative concept designed to unite the areas around the South Perth foreshore including the Mends Street Jetty foreshore, Mends Street, Harper Terrace, Perth Zoo and Windsor Park. As a part of the project, a new piazza will be built at the Mends Street Jetty foreshore as a gateway to visitors disembarking the ferry.

DENMAC is responsible for the fabrication of the abstract frilled neck lizard and numbat canopies that are the centrepiece of the piazza. The giant animals will be 20m long and, 9m and 7.5m high respectively. They will welcome visitors arriving at the Mends Street Jetty and guide them through the new Mends Street Piazza to the Perth Zoo.

The animals are designed to resemble shapes formed by origami and will be created by bending plate aluminium. While the exterior of the structure is envisaged to use the angles of the bent aluminium to play on light and shadow, the underside of the canopies will be fabricated using aluminium ribbing to create the idea of being underneath the animal.

To create the aesthetic of the animals, the aluminium will be finished with painted geometric patterns and some aluminium plates will be punctured to allow for transparency. The animals will be painted to be a combination of bronze, yellow, orange, gold, red and stone, depicting earthy Australian tones.

The project is currently in the design and engineering phase and will begin fabrication in March 2019.