Peninsula Link is a celebration of the art of driving, offering a dynamic 15-minute journey through distinct character zones. It also features the Road Biennale, a curated public art program that enhances the experience with ever-changing installations along the route.
The road is an extension of the existing EastLink freeway that stretches from Seaford to Mount Martha on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Engineers design freeways for efficiency and safety. Our role as architects was to offer pure urban design advice. We considered the human, plant, and animal communities along its path, striving to respect their needs while crafting a dynamic experience for drivers, locals, and visitors alike. In many ways, we served as the project’s conscience.
Roads are part of communities so we considered the thousands of fences behind the road. How could Mornington Peninsula locals—the people and the wildlife—interact with the freeway? How could we reduce the noise of the traffic?
Our noise walls are the first in Victoria to be made from heavy-duty plastic, the sort used for water tanks and wheelie bins. The 40 different high-density polyethylene panels were made locally, in Seaford. The panels are far more environmentally friendly than concrete because they can be installed by hand (rather than by crane) and recycled.
“Using plastic for noise walls is the new business as usual. It was a game changer for other roads.”
—ARM Director Jesse Judd
The walls are patterned on both sides, creating a textured backdrop for the 25-kilometres of walking and cycling paths that flank the freeway. The pathway is the biggest extension to Victoria’s shared use path network since EastLink trail.
The elevated, earth-coloured Woodland Experiences section goes through The Pines, a 108-hectare remnant bushland reserve in Frankston North that is home to rare plants and animals, including the southern brown bandicoot and Eastern Dwarf Galaxias fish. Here, the noise walls have to screen out light too. They are patterned with grey and brown shapes captured from the forest floor to create a filmic, flickering representation of a canopy of trees, folding in and out with oxidized steel panels. Acrylic panels cap the noise walls, letting drivers see the treetops.
A series of wildlife underpasses is beneath the Woodland zone. Some are as narrow as a burrow while the largest one—six metres high and 40 metres wide—is big enough for humans.
Colour and design features help drivers find their place even when they are travelling fast.
Coloured glazed bricks replace conventional rock-beaching beneath the 11 local roads that cross the freeway. A flash of blue brick indicates a key intersection, such as the Peninsula Portal exit from EastLink.
Our designs divide the road into visually discrete places: the zigzag blue panels mark the Peninsula Portal at Carrum Downs; the rock-like panels signify the urban-rural Threshold at Baxter, the green bricks indicate the Moorooduc Plains at the end. The millions of bricks were laid by hand in chevron pattern and they create a joyful glazed tunnel.
The landscaping, including earth formations and the planting of 1.5 million indigenous grasses, shrubs and trees, is a further marker of place.
The work of artist Rosalie Gascoigne inspired the text walls of the Cultural Landscape zone through Frankston and Langwarrin South. The terracotta and grey walls layer local places names over Aboriginal place names that we discovered on a nineteenth-century surveying map of the area.
ARM facilitated the partnership between road developers Southern Way and McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery to create a unique public art program along Peninsula Link. The Southern Way McClelland Commission delivers new large-scale sculptures every two years, alternating between the Cranbourne Road and Skye Road interchanges, with the program set to continue until 2037.
The first three sculptures were installed in the freeway’s Cultural Landscape Zone:
Subsequent artworks have continued to shape the Peninsula Link experience, including Gregor Kregar’s Reflective Lullaby, a towering chrome gnome; John Meade and Emily Karanikolopoulos’s Love Flower, inspired by Ikebana arrangements; and Manon van Kouswijk’s Peninsula Pearls, a floating chain of spheres suspended above the freeway.
By 2037, a total of 14 commissioned sculptures will have contributed to this evolving Road Biennale, ensuring that Peninsula Link remains not just a route, but a cultural journey.
Panorama Station, Louise Paramor
Rex Australis, Dean Colls
Tree of Life, Phil Price