A broken heart at Yagan Square
Academic and author Jillian Walliss recently reflected on the radical redevelopment of Boorloo/Perth's Yagan Square in Landscape Architecture Australia on 19 September 2025. She calls on the design community to speak up about the value of civic space in our cities.
Below is a companion response from Kirsten Bauer, Global Design Director, and Michael Rowlands and Tom Griffiths, Perth Studio Directors, offering the perspective of Yagan Square's original designers on the changes that have since befallen it.
Yagan Square was produced by an Indigenous-led process, organised around the Whadjuk Working Group guided by Noongar elder Dr. Richard Walley. This was not tokenistic consultation, it was a genuine collaboration that placed Aboriginal voices, knowledge, and culture at the centre of the project. Indigenous meaning, memory, and identity formed the very foundations of the precinct.
The project is still considered by many to be one of the most visible Indigenous-led collaborative design processes undertaken in Australia. It became a national reference point for the design industry, showing how design can be enriched when Indigenous voices are not just heard, but followed. It was more than an urban redevelopment; it was a cultural statement that set the tone for how a city might begin to reconcile with its layered history.
We have not allowed Yagan Square the time to grow into the fabric of the city. For places to be meaningful we must give them time: time for people to gather, for rituals to form, for memory to accumulate. Instead, Yagan Square has been abruptly redeveloped. And this redevelopment has sidelined the patient, Indigenous-led process that had made it remarkable, to meet political timelines. This should give us pause. Yagan Square showed us that leadership in city-making is not only about bold architectural gestures or swift political manoeuvres. It is about listening. It is about recognising that reconciliation is not a project milestone or a political promise, but a practice that must be allowed to embed itself into the everyday life of the city.
Looking back a decade on, the lesson is clear: when we panic, we erase complexity, and in doing so we erase meaning. The Australian Garden of Dreams at the National Museum of Australia by Room 4.1.3 and Richard Weller comes to mind. Controversial at its inception and still challenging today, over time it has come to be respected and treasured. Alterations, such as the recent entrance work by TCL, were only undertaken with consultation and approval from Weller himself. This is how civic spaces should be treated: with care, continuity, and respect.
As designers we always see our role as part of the project’s life, and we are not precious about alterations or changes that need to be made. But we are concerned when full scale changes are undertaken and we are not invited to the party so to speak, nor even acknowledged. Would we have been part of this change at Yagan Square if asked? maybe, maybe not – but at least we might have an opportunity to provide more appropriate solutions to the critique.
One cannot help but sense a touch of schadenfreude from parts of the Perth design community as the project has been slowly redeveloped. Perhaps because Yagan Square was overtly challenging and experimental it is seen as less deserving of protection. But this is a dangerous precedent. Civic spaces are not just design statements; they are cultural vessels. They require stewardship, and not to be political footballs.
Photography Credits
Before: Peter Bennetts
After: Jillian Walliss
