Kate Coletti: irreverent and creative Australian design

Kate Colletti is a nationally and internationally recognized landscape architect, urban designer and environmental artist. She is the Founding Director of TCL (Taylor Cullity Lethlean) and has worked on numerous art and garden festivals in Australia and abroad.

Kate Colletti wallpaper
Kate Coletti has a background in botany and a strong personal interest in gardening, which has led her to plan plantations all over Australia. She completed a Ph.D. that reflects 25 years of practice at TCL as well as her interest in beauty, aesthetics, and grooming.
Landscape architecture in Australia
Landscape architecture is a relatively new field all over the world, but in Australia being a western builder, we often look to Europe and America. However, Australians can be quite mavericks when it comes to art and design, and while we look to other companies, we don’t always follow their rules.

The time paradox
Non-Indigenous Australians have one of the youngest Western cultures in the world with only about 200 years of history, while Aborigines have one of the world’s oldest known Aboriginal cultures. This creates a paradox between the old and the new.
Australian geological landscape
Europe is geologically relatively new, while Australia has some of the oldest geology in the world, with some of the most depleted soils. The Australian landscape is so ancient that it has been subjected to wear and tear, with terrain less mountainous than other regions of the world.

Australian Garden
The Australian Garden expresses the relationship of Australian flora and Australia to the landscape in an artistic and sculptural manner. The TCL team was interested in telling stories about the Australian landscape in an interactive way rather than sign-based or didactic.

Sand garden
The narrative that defines the Australian park is the water journey. The abundance or lack of water are defining elements in the Australian landscape and in Sand Garden, TCL wanted to express the sublime and surreal qualities of Australia’s arid and desert regions, such as a sense of spaciousness and simplicity. These vast landscapes are often misunderstood as rugged, but they are actually very fragile and made of incredibly poor soil. We wanted to create a unique experience for visitors to the Sand Garden, one that would allow them to feel a sense of reverence similar to what is felt in a Japanese garden. To encourage this sense, we have landscaped a garden rather than a strolling garden, a no-go garden.