FAP 2022 Juror Project Highlight: Anton Siura’s Spectacular Tebet Eco Garden

Handling large-scale public parks is not a walk in the park—they require close coordination between many government and private parties, from assessing the existing conditions, ideating designs that could engage the community, to ensuring ecological restoration through the blue-green infrastructure.

One of the most highly-awaited park reopenings in Jakarta is for Tebet Eco Garden: aside from its eye-catching link bridge and pavilion, it is currently being botanically conserved and undergoing river re-naturalisation. Anton Siura, FuturArc Prize 2022 juror is the lead designer behind this project—as an accredited Landscape Architect and Founder of SIURA Studio, he has nearly 15 years of experience in handling urban design and landscape projects across Southeast Asia, working with diverse Singapore and Indonesia clients such as HDB, NParks, PUB, URA, Jakarta Government and global developers.

We had a tête-à-tête with Anton about the challenges, lessons and fun parts about Tebet Eco Garden’s designs. Read on to find out Anton’s answers!

Q: What’s the one thing most people don’t know about the process?

A: Every existing major tree was surveyed for their girth size, canopy size, tree height, species and health condition. And there were about 1,500 trees. So we had over a thousand pages of reports for us to use as a reference, which trees are to be kept, which trees to be transplanted, and when the health condition imposes a safety issue, we need to cut them. So, every decision is made through careful consideration.

Q: What’s the main challenge from drawing board to realisation?

A: The main challenge of the project is the timeline, because we only had five months to design and to do the tender documentation, with eight months left for the construction. So, even from the design stage we had to make sure that our design can be completed within the timeframe, as well as the drawing had to be super detailed so that we can help the contractor to build it faster without having to produce so many drawings.

The third challenge is physically, I cannot be in Jakarta due to the COVID situation, so I had to rely a lot on the pictures and video calls for site supervision. These three are the main challenges.