Capital idea wins design prize David Kaesehagen, managing director of Freemantle-based architecture firm Ecoscape, which won the $70,000 Capithetical competition. DAVID Kaesehagen's dream for a new capital of Australia in the Kimberley may never be realised, but he has been substantially rewarded for his vision. His Fremantle architecture firm Ecoscape picked up $70,000 last night when it was awarded first prize in the Capithetical international design competition at the Gallery of Australian Design in Canberra. The competition, worth $100,000 in prizes, was held as part of the Centenary of Canberra celebrations. Entrants were required to follow in the footsteps of Walter Burley Griffin by designing a new capital city of Australia. "Our design is based around the idea of a northern capital," Kaesehagen said. There's a debate going on now in the federal arena about the development of northern Australia. If we don't engage in that debate we could end up with developments up there that nobody's happy with. The Northern Capital, as the design is called, has a population of 200,000 and is positioned at the edge of Lake Argyle in the Kimberley. It does not abolish the capital of Canberra, but serves as an additional Australian capital with a better geographical position to form relationships with Asia. The design includes a vertical farming system with multi-storey pods, inspired by a commercial operation that opened in Singapore last year. "If you look at the Asian Century White Paper you see the demand for food production from China is going to be very high," Kaesehagen said. One of the biggest areas of demand is going to be for fruit and vegetables and these vertical farms are ideal. Members of the Ecoscape design team flew over Lake Argyle in a helicopter to examine the site for their entry. They have made an eight-minute video that is showing among the 20 best entries in the competition at the Gallery of Australian Design. Brisbane architects Brit Andresen and Mara Francis were awarded $30,000 second prize for their Sedimentary City Canberra, a design that uses mappings of Canberra to transform the existing capital. Centenary of Canberra creative director Robyn Archer said the competition honoured the boldness of the Federal Capital Design Competition, won by Burley Griffin, in 1911. "It's about stimulating ideas," Archer said. I would like to see the passion and idealism that went in to a conversation about a new capital 100 years ago revived about all issues to do with our capital instead of Canberra constantly being pigeonholed as simply the home of the federal government and to be disliked if you don't like the government of the day.