Lost + Found
Work for Landscape Context Studio: ‘the island studio’ at the University of Western Australia
This project seeks to memorialize the Baudin expedition of the early 1800s while also redesigning Heirisson Island – an artificial island in the Swan River / Derbal Yerrigan – as a place for people to enjoy water-based recreational activities. The Baudin expedition found many specimens unknown to Europeans at the time and created new mapping of Australia. At the same time, the expedition was often very lost. There are numerous tales of members going missing while gathering specimens or exploring a coastline. The design of the island seeks to convey feelings of being both “lost + found”.
The island was cut into waterways with scaled distances representing the routes of the three different ships from the expedition. Each waterway is 1 to 1.5 metres deep and either 5 or 10 metres wide depending on if one ship travelled that route or two. Land removed from the canals would be used to increase the elevations of new islands ranging from 1 to 5 metres tall. Using a grid in conjunction with the new contours of the island, it would be replanted increasing in density moving from east to west. The corresponding elevation determines the type of plant used, with samphire at the lowest and salt-tolerant trees at the highest. This allows plants to migrate up with future rising water levels. The current lakes on the island were deepened allowing for different bird life to thrive.
Coloured buoys labelled with animals sketched by the expedition would designate each of the four paddle routes. The routes range from easy to extreme, with the extreme route lasting anywhere from three to five hours of paddling and most likely involving getting lost. Different points of interest on each route would represent significant locations from the journey and tell a story of “lost + found”.
+ Project featured in 2026 Winter Collective Exhibit and Catalogue
+ AutoCAD, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop