In the public interest

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1 spring 2013 BY DESIGN Sydney s planning future REVIEW Reflections on Public Sydney: Drawing The City DRAWING ATTENTION The language of architecture DESIGN PARRAMATTA Reinvigorating public places In the public interest Documenting, drawing and designing a city

2 Editor Laura Wise Editorial Committee Chair Shaun Carter Editorial Committee Noni Boyd 7. Contents 02 President s message Callantha Brigham callantha.brigham@services.nsw.gov.au Matthew Chan matt@scalearchitecture.com 03 Chapter news Art direction and design Jamie Carroll and Ersen Sen leadinghand.com.au Copy Editor Monique Pasilow Managing Editor Roslyn Irons Opinion: Diversity - A building block for innovation Dr Joanne Jakovich and Anita Morandini Our biggest building project Joe Agius Advertising roslyn.irons@architecture.com.au Subscriptions (annual) Five issues $60, students $40 nsw@architecture.com.au 12 Review: Reflections on Public Sydney Andrew Burns, Rachel Neeson and Ken Maher Editorial & advertising office Tusculum, 3 Manning Street Potts Point NSW 2011 (02) ISSN Published five times a year, Architecture Bulletin is the journal of the Australian Institute of Architects, NSW Chapter (ACN ). Continuously published since Drawing the public s attention: The Language of architecture Adrian Chan, David Drinkwater and Aaron Murray James Barnet: A path through his city Dr Peter Kohane Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in articles and letters published in Architecture Bulletin are the personal views and opinions of the authors of these writings and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Institute and its officers. Material contained in this publication is general comment and is not intended as advice on any particular matter. No reader should act or fail to act on the basis of any material herein. Readers should consult professional advisers. The Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter, its officers, editor, editorial committee and authors expressly disclaim all liability to any persons in respect of acts or omissions by any such person in reliance on any of the contents of this publication. Print and paper Printed by Rostone Print using soy-based vegetable inks on FSC mixed source certified paper, manufactured to ISO environmental accreditation using elemental chlorine-free (ECF) pulps. Plates and paper offcuts from the printing process are recycled. Patrons Architecture Bulletin thanks its Patrons for their support Gold Patron Hassell Silver Patrons Bates Smart Cox Architecture Group GSA Bronze Patrons fjmt (Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp) Lend Lease Design Mirvac Design Tanner Kibble Denton Architects Supporter Buzacott Architects Technical Sponsor Architectural Window Systems From the Government Architect: Non-autonomous architecture Peter Poulet Design Parramatta Kati Westlake Canberra at a crossroad Brian Binning Review: Angus Hardwick and Marly Swanson Wood share their experience of this year s student architecture congress Nexus 2013 Review: A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (book) Richard Dinham Obituary: Ross Langdon On the cover: City icon; in 2013 Sydney Opera House celebrates 40 years of influencing and shaping public life. Image: Brett Boardman. Architecture Bulletin Spring

3 chapter news president, s message State of practice Having had the opportunity to meet with many practices over the past few months, my sense is that the state of practice in New South Wales continues to be patchy and varied. Some practices appear particularly busy while others struggle. This seems consistent across all scales of practice and applies to Sydney-based, as well as regional practice. As a result of this heightened competitive environment fees are unfortunately impacted; in some instances to the point where the provision of a quality service to our clients and, hence, quality built outcomes are unsustainable. This is not healthy for the profession and collectively diminishes our capacity to do our work well. Apart from this, and equally concerning, is the longer-term structural impact on our profession and its standing. Across the building and construction industry architects are among the worstremunerated professionals. The sustainability of the profession is dependent on our collective willingness to tender fees appropriate to the task and service. Often during difficult periods it is those newest to the profession that are impacted first. This brings me to the emotive issue of unpaid internships. Internships There has been much concern among our younger members at the rise of unpaid internships; along with the majority of the profession I share these concerns. Discussion on the issue seems largely centred on the ethics around the benefits an architecture student or graduate derives from unpaid work, versus the contributions of the student or graduate to the productive output of a practice. This discussion belies the clarity in regard to unpaid internships in employment law. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, any architecture student (local or international) or graduate of an architecture course undertaking work for a practice in Australia is considered an employee ; as such there are statutory obligations placed on the employer, for instance, the obligation to pay the minimum wage. These are described in the Architects Award 2010, which also covers architecture students. In determining whether a student or graduate is undertaking work for a practice and is, therefore, an employee the Fair Work Ombudsman will consider issues such as the purpose of the arrangement, who derives benefit from the arrangement, the time length of the arrangement, and the expectation of productive and useful output for the employer. As many practices are increasingly approached by students and graduates seeking unpaid internships I alert you to your obligations under the law in this regard, and to operate within it. Penalties for breaches are significant. Ongoing engagement with State Government The Institute has continued to engage with the State Government on the imminent new planning act. I have participated in a number of discussion forums organised by the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure along with other industry stakeholders, the most recent being on the transition of SEPP 65 into the new act. The Institute s position on this is to ensure the positive aspects of the policy are not lost or eroded in transition. Some proposals arising out of the SEPP 65 review, which was carried out earlier this year, will be incorporated and have the Institute s support. The revised bills recently tabled in the NSW Parliament have confirmed briefings by the Department that some of the Institute s key recommendations have been addressed. That is a good first step. Once the legislation is adopted, it is critical that we have a role in working with the Department in developing the regulation - including the details of how the new system will work. Sydney Architecture Festival An important part of the NSW Chapter s cultural program, the Sydney Architecture Festival (SAF) is slowly gathering a presence in Sydney s cultural festival landscape. This year s festival continued to build on past years with many excellent events. Jointly run by the Institute and the NSW Architects Registration Board, SAF s fundamental purpose is to advocate the importance of good architecture and built environments to the community. The public interest This spring edition of Architecture Bulletin, In the Public Interest, explores the on-going vitality of the public realm in Sydney, including reviews of Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill s epic undertaking Public Sydney: Drawing The City published earlier in the year to much anticipation. It is a rich story comprehensively unpacked from the present right back to the founding of the colony. Much advocacy from the Institute in the last few months has been around the public interest, be it on contentious and important sites, heritage matters, planning for Sydney s growth or government policy directions and initiatives. It is important the Institute remains an active participant with government, allied professions, industry and community in all these issues, which have a clear dimension of public interest. Joe Agius NSW Chapter President Chapter Manager s report This year New South Wales was fortunate to host the National Architecture Awards at the Sydney Opera House to coincide with 40th anniversary celebrations for Australia s most iconic building. Hundreds of people gathered in the Concert Hall to find out which buildings were chosen by your peers as Australia s best in Congratulations to all the winners and especially to those NSW members who were recognised this year. The Institute was also involved in a one-day symposium on 25 October to mark the 40th anniversary of the Opera House, with Danish and Australian architects gathering to discuss the contemporary role of design in shaping our collective cultural imaginations and the cities in which they thrive. Patrons news Tanner Kibble Denton have completed the final stage of the restoration and adaptation of the nationally significant Female Orphan School at the Parramatta campus of the University of Western Sydney (pictured above), with the project officially opened by the Governor-General, Her Excellency the Honourable Quentin Bryce AC CVO on 24 September years after the laying of the original foundation stone in September Starting in 2001, Tanner Kibble Denton Architects delivered the adaptation and restoration in four stages, which encompassed the facade conservation and restoration, interior adaptation and landscape renewal. With the completion of the final stage, the building is now a major cultural asset for the university and the community, providing gallery and exhibition spaces. Significantly, the final stage of the project provides a permanent home for the Whitlam Institute, including the Whitlam Prime Ministerial Library and archive. This year s Sydney Architecture Festival was in full swing across the city from 1 10 November with many of the city s cultural institutions hosting a variety of architecture and design-focused events, including talks, exhibitions, workshops and tours around the metropolitan area. Over the past six months the Chapter has been actively involved in developing more than 20 of the 60 events held during the festival and we would like to thank the many members and students who generously gave their time to assist in curating and staging these events. Thank you also to the City of Sydney for their continuing support of the festival and Archikidz. These events could not happen without this support. It has been another very busy year for the Chapter. Attendances at most events have Mirvac Design is currently working on a number of exciting residential projects nationally in response to growing demand in the marketplace. These projects are in various stages of planning, from concept design through to planning applications and marketing. Mirvac Design worked in collaboration with a number of other architectural practices on some of these projects, which is proving to be a successful model in ensuring all-round design quality outcomes. An example of this is Maestro (pictured above), the most recent stage at Harold Park in Sydney, which has been designed in collaboration with Eeles Trelease and was recently successfully released to the market. In response to the increased workload, Mirvac Design has made some internal promotions including Anita Tyler and Mark Young being promoted to senior associates and Kah Heng Yep and Tanja Hodgson promoted to associates. increased and it is anticipated that by the end of the year more than 4,000 architects, members and non-members, will have attended at least one Institute event during the year. It is very pleasing to see members actively interacting with their Institute and supporting their profession. Finally a very happy Christmas and New Year to everyone. Roslyn Irons NSW Chapter Manager Cox Richardson has made detailed submissions on the State Government s new White Paper: A New Planning System for NSW and the draft Metropolitan Strategy, emphasising the need for longer-term strategic planning balanced by plans to improve the city. It is important that our profession advocates for the city in the public domain. On the international front, the new Kaohsiung Exhibition and Convention Centre (pictured above) is now under construction in Taipei, Taiwan. When completed it will add an important piece of infrastructure to the city and provide employment opportunities for 2,000 people. 2 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

4 chapter news McBryde set up Innovarchi with Stephanie Smith in Sydney in Earlier in his career, he was the local representative architect for the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which designed and delivered Aurora Place in Sydney. Before that, he worked with Renzo Piano in Paris, France, Genoa (Italy) and Osaka (Japan). He has particular strengths in commercial high-rise and residential projects. McBryde is the Sydney representative for the international Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Moves and appointments The directors of Tzannes Associates have welcomed associate Ben Green as a new director of the practice. After graduating with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney in 1998, Ben joined Tzannes in 1999, and in 2010 became an associate, leading the development of the practice s design culture and its design, procurement and project delivery systems. He is currently working on major multi and single residential projects in Sydney. DARCH NSW Country Division Bates Smart has commenced design development for 177 Pacific Highway, North Sydney (pictured above) a 30-storey tower for Leighton Properties. The building will be the headquarters for the Leighton Group of Companies, including Leighton Holdings, Leighton Properties, Leighton Contractors, John Holland and Theiss. Located on a prominent corner of the Pacific Highway, the tower s peripheral volumes have been cut away to minimise overshadowing of significant heritage sites and pedestrian plazas in the vicinity, resulting in an iconic form that rises above its North Sydney neighbours. At ground level a three-storey glazed podium surrounds a publicly accessible garden plaza that provides a weather-protected year-round space for the people of North Sydney. On the upper levels a series of voids penetrate the floor plates, vertically linking the workspace to provide connection and amenity for the tenants. Due for completion in 2016, the building is designed to achieve a 5 Star Green Star Office Design and Office As Built v3 and a 5 Star NABERS Energy rating. Hassell has welcomed Ken McBryde (pictured left), co-founder of the noted design studio Innovarchi, to the firm as a principal. He is based in the Sydney studio with a brief that extends across the international market and will further enhance the depth of design talent available to the practice s clients. The :1 Project held on 20 September saw 10 teams of students and architects collaborate on a one-day design and build project of micro-pavilions using base materials of timber pallets and plants (pictured above). An initiative of DARCH and SONA, with the support of the team at Lochbuild and sponsors, the project s pieces were built at Sydney Corporate Park and shared with thousands of people at the BEAMS Arts Festival in Chippendale, forming a venue for musicians. Sustainable Chippendale has since repurposed the pieces for their initiatives, and so they live on. The first recipient of the David Lindner Prize, Nathan Etherington, presented his research Do Not Disturb: Toxic Urbanism and the Alexandra Canal on Friday 8 November at Tusculum as part of the Sydney Architecture Festival; his corresponding essay will appear in the Summer 2014 edition of Architecture Bulletin. Now in their second year, the DARCH Horse Awards will be presented on Friday 22 November. The awards are a unique opportunity for architects to recognise and celebrate outstanding contributions by non-architects in the pursuit of a high-quality built environment. For more information go to NSW Country Division members have celebrated the best in regional New South Wales architecture with the Country Division Architecture Awards recently presented at the annual conference on 3 October. The most prestigious honour, the James Barnet Award, went to Takt Studio for The Pod (pictured below). A full list of winners from the awards will feature in the Summer 2014 edition of Architecture Bulletin. Newcastle Division The winners of the UrbanGrowth NSW Lower Hunter Urban Design Awards (LHUDA) were announced on 6 September with Crone Partners taking home the 2013 UrbanGrowth NSW Award for Excellence in Urban Design for Merewether Surfhouse, while Merewether 4 Beach House by Webber Architects received the 2013 Master Builders Group Training People s Choice Award. Nominations for the 2014 Newcastle Division Architecture Awards open on 11 November. Visit for more details. Kafka House, Lindfield, photographed by Phil Ward, in the early 1950s. Image: Paul Kafka Collection, Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums. Lost modern house Despite a submission from the Institute regarding the significance of the design of the 1948 Kafka House by Hugo Stossel for the furniture designer Paul Kafka, Ku-ring-gai Council have approved its demolition. The Viennese-born furniture designer Paul Kafka migrated to Australia with his wife and mother in After initially working for the plywood manufacturer Ralph Symonds, Kafka opened his own furniture factory. He purchased the land in Eton Road, Lindfield in June 1948 but had been living in the area since The DA was submitted and approved in November 1948 and the house was erected shortly after. The modest house was designed by the Hungarian-born Stossel, who had migrated to Sydney in 1938, a year before the Kafkas. Kafka produced exclusive and elegant furniture for many of the European Modernists who migrated to Sydney in the late 1930s and 1940s, including Harry Seidler, Dr Henry Epstein, Hans Peter Oser and George Reeves. Paul Kafka lived in the house until his death in His widow Isle remarried and she and her husband George Hocking continued to live in the house. The Kafka House was featured in Australian House and Garden in May 1952, indicating that the functional houses designed by the European-trained Modernists, and the elegant veneered furniture designed to fill them, was influencing taste in both architecture and interior design in Sydney in the early 1950s. Stossel s design for this modest house for the Kafka family was contemporary, with the more well-known Rose Seidler House designed by Harry Seidler for his mother. These stark geometric white houses contrasted with the early modernist designs by Australian architects such as Sydney Ancher s 1945 Sulman Medal-winning design for the Poyntsfeld House in Maytone Avenue and Albert Hanson s own house in Killara which won the1948 Sulman Medal. Paul Kafka is probably the most well known of the European cabinet and furniture makers who migrated to Australia during the 1930s and 40s. Kafka utilised the techniques that he had learnt in Vienna but worked with Australian timbers such as coachwood, which had been used as substitutes for overseas timbers during the war. Rarer timbers from Europe and Africa continued to be used as inlays. His work contrasted with mainstream furniture production in Australia at that time, which had long employed solid timbers such as cedar and Queensland maple, and is now highly sought after. Stossel s design and Kafka s furniture is recognisably in the tradition of the Viennesebased architect and furniture designer Adolf Loos, author of the influential essay Ornament and Crime and architect of the series of well-known white cubic houses in his native Czechoslovakia, as well as Vienna and Paris. Plans, including previous schemes, and photographs of Kafka House, as well as furniture designed for the house, are now in the Kafka Archive held by the Historic Houses Trust of NSW, known today as Sydney Living Museums. 4 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

5 opinion Diversity: A building block for innovation Diversity is often cited in connection to equity: equitable gender representation, equitable ethnic representation and equal pay. But what if diversity was valued intrinsically, not only as a commitment to a fair society? Joanne Jakovich and Anita Morandini from Sydney Salon pose the question. When leading business thinkers are asked, what are the real barriers to achieving innovation?, they often refer to the core issues faced by any sector: lack of agility, lack of follow-through on ideas, lack of collaboration across silos, lack of staff innovation, too much red tape, and a lack of diversity in teams leading to stagnation and groupthink. Although we organise in groups for efficiency and power, we are increasingly faced with complex problems that demand rethinking how we work together to solve them. Conventionally we bring expert skills to the occasion and engage in a linear process of back-and-forth interactions leading to a solution. The conundrum is that complex problems are simply not that tidy. So how do we best operate as a collective to successfully deliver innovative solutions? Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and Union College in the US recently demonstrated that the capacity of a team is not the product of the intelligence of its individual members, but instead is the result of its diversity and its ability to collaborate equitably. The study analysed a group performance factor known as collective intelligence and found that it is not correlated with the individual intelligence of group members as one might expect, or with conventionally cited factors such as group cohesion, motivation and satisfaction. Instead, collective intelligence, measured as the ability of a group to solve a complex design task, is correlated with: the social sensitivity of group members (how well group members perceive each other s emotions); the fair distribution of conversational turn-taking; and the gender balance of the group. 1 In effect, the study suggests groups can be made smarter by increasing aspects of diversity and improving the ability to collaborate. Intrigued by this finding, we wanted to shine a light on the study and explore the topic further. Although innovation, as an inherently collective process, could be improved with more focus on the human skill of collaboration and diversity of think-tank members, these initiatives are rarely the agenda of the process-oriented built environment sector. To explore innovation across all sectors of business/commerce, and to nurture collaboration across them in order to create diversity, we decided to establish a conversation series, Sydney Salon. The salon-style forum brings together innovators from a variety of sectors and involves them in semi-structured discussions on selected topics over informal dining. For the inaugural Sydney Salon we gathered 20 of Sydney s leading innovators representing architecture, planning, government, finance and education and asked these questions: how is innovation achieved in your sector? and what is the role of diversity?. Through their answers we found that diversity is realised in numerous ways: by opening up collaboration with stakeholders; by seeking advice from consumers rather than experts; by inviting dissimilar disciplines together to break patterns of familiar thinking; and so on. While we have smart workplaces and collaborative technologies, organisational silos were seen as one of the last barriers to innovation. Cross-disciplinary collaboration from within businesses is the first step towards improved diversity and innovation. If collaboration is properly nurtured using a human-centred approach, a new culture of openness to innovation can emerge. Within our salon we also observed a consensus that innovation practices are hindered by our individual acceptance of the status quo. We operate in a field of expert expectations where we value authority and instruction. Our experience of our profession is weighted with a knowing of what is and isn t possible. Our capacity to inspire a client to take risks and provide them with the confidence to see them through is limited by our own constraints and risk averseness. In this first Sydney Salon, our group of innovators brought forward a strong agenda for the role of empowered governance and the value of risk-taking, and displayed a willingness to embrace complexity, an awareness of bottom-up intelligence, a hearty intolerance of so-called barriers, and an infectious enthusiasm for action. Sydney Salon will continue as a twice-yearly event aiming to nurture the cross-sector exchange of innovation practices and support a move to diversity for diversity s sake across all commercial/business sectors. Diversity and human-centred collaboration need to be at the centre of the architecture profession s contribution to solving the complex challenges of our urban future. The timing is right and the market is ripe for this shift in approach. Dr Joanne Jakovich and Anita Morandini Dr Joanne Jakovich is a researcher and educator specialising in crowd-share innovation and its application to urban planning, governance and business innovation. She is senior lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and a cofounder of the UTS u.lab. Anita Morandini is an architect with Smart Design Studio, Sydney. She is currently developing an integrated urbanism service model for complex projects, focused on delivering innovation through strategic practice. The views and opinions expressed here are those of Morandini and are not representative of Smart Design Studio. Footnotes: 1. A.W Woolley, C.F Chabris, A. Pentland, N. Hashmi and T.W Malone. Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups, Science Express, 30 September ( 1. Our building project For a city with an ad hoc planning past, Sydney s future design focus must put people and quality design first, writes NSW Chapter President Joe Agius. The Sydney metropolitan area comprises just 0.2 per cent of New South Wales, which itself is around 10 per cent of the Australian land mass. Yet its population represents 20 per cent of the Australian total and its economy contributes to more than one-fifth of Australia s gross domestic product. Greater Sydney ranks above both Singapore and Hong Kong in terms of economic output. Population growth in Greater Sydney accounted for 74 per cent of the state s total growth in the five years to June The size and complexity of the area may appear daunting, but it is helpful to think of the Sydney metropolitan area as one large building project subject to the same stages as those of architectural projects: 1. The brief understand the client s (i.e. the community) needs 2. Design in context understand the topography and existing form as the basis for the design 3. Get the details right pay attention to quality at street and precinct levels 4. Work within budget set realistic targets and review them regularly. The City of Sydney s Sustainable Sydney 2030 Community Strategic Plan ticks all these boxes: it was developed through a rigorous research phase balancing community input and concerns with studies and reports commissioned from experts it differentiates precincts through the City of Villages concept it is focused on the quality of the city, its parks and open spaces, sustainability, and the development of its neighbourhoods it is directly accountable to its residents, building owners and stakeholders through the Lord Mayor s annual report. It is very different from a plan for the whole Sydney region, however, in that the City of Sydney: does not encompass the whole city on a metropolitan scale; can only improve Sydney s CBD and inner suburbs that are already well served by a high-quality public domain, jobs, universities, etc does not have responsibility for transport does not control its major roads does not build housing. Sydney s fatal attraction Sydney s setting is both its star attraction and its fatal flaw. Bedazzled by the beauty of its physical setting which attracts capital, expertise and more of the population it seems we never take our eyes off the harbour for long enough to see the social and economic disadvantage perpetuated by this fixation. Draw a diagonal line roughly from the Hawkesbury/Macquarie towns in the > 6 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

6 north-west to Botany Bay in the south-east; east of the line are the areas of relative advantage, west are those that are missing out. We re in thrall to the attractions of the harbour, the city and the northern and eastern suburbs, and we keep on redeveloping them to the virtual exclusion of everywhere else. As Hugh Stretton said so persuasively in his groundbreaking 1970s study, being desperately short of a good city, we must continuously destroy the very best city we ve got. 2 The Darling Harbour redevelopment project is symptomatic of this continuum of similar wasteful makeovers. Nature s bounty is Sydney s gift; lacklustre planning and mediocre design its all too frequent response. As Matthew Pullinger and Ken Maher wrote in Architecture Bulletin Nov/ Dec 2009, With rare exceptions, our built environment reflects a misplaced second-hand response to culture and climate. Our pragmatic culture and benign climate have contributed to design neglect, at times even a culture of anti-design. Like many cities, Sydney experiences forces that diminish its quality: a retreat from public values to private interests, a corresponding decline in civic pride by government and private enterprise, and an acceptance of the city as a commodity for short-term investment. 3 If anything, the change of NSW Government in 2011 has only exacerbated these negative trends; the O Farrell Government s withdrawal from participation in the master planning of public land has accelerated to the point that there is no public role in the future of Darling Harbour beyond handing its planning and redevelopment to one commercial organisation. On the other side of the harbour, James Packer s casino has taken over land at Barangaroo Central previously designated for public recreation; all without any call for tenders or even a development application. The entry of the new planning bills into State Parliament late this year and the new draft of the Metropolitan Strategy for Sydney to be released in early 2014 provide the opportunity to look beyond these disturbing trends at the future growth and design of the whole Sydney metropolitan area. Sydney s planning saga The history of Sydney s planning schemes is a story of lost opportunities. The Royal Commission for the Improvement of the City 2. of Sydney and its Suburbs in examined four key areas: traffic, housing, growth and beautification. But, in an eerie foretaste of our present malaise, the whole exercise was primarily a means for an urban growth machine mobilised by elites to influence government policy towards removing impediments to efficiency and facilitating greater business opportunities. 4 The celebrated 1948 County of Cumberland Planning Scheme had its own problems. While it made admirable recommendations for decentralised employment, ring roads linking suburbs, open space and a green belt, the pressure from developers encouraged the key state agencies 3. particularly the utilities and the Housing Commission to ignore the plan and do what they wanted. Twenty years later, the 1968 Sydney Region Outline Plan reframed the debate on Sydney s growth by including Newcastle and Wollongong, and their respective rail links, as part of Greater Sydney. A new strategy The NSW Government s draft Metropolitan Strategy for Sydney (metro strategy) released earlier this year falls short of the ambitions of previous plans. Its time period is only 18 years, compared with the 32-year forecast in 1968, 1. Go west - Parramatta lies at the heart of Sydney s planning future. Image: Parramatta City Council. 2. The great divide - Census figures reveal the disproportion between east and west Sydney. Image: ABS Social Atlas, The Functional Plan from the County of Cumberland Planning Scheme Report produced by the Cumberland County Council, Image: Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) Digital Archive. and the Central Coast has been excluded from consideration. The Institute believes a regional strategic plan for Sydney needs to: manage growth deliver physical improvement of the built environment through place making, transport, and infrastructure use a year time frame base its strategies and targets on publicly available data and evidence include planning for transport, land use and infrastructure in the one document. Although the draft metro strategy was published first, it must ultimately respond to the requirements specified in the planning white paper: A New Planning System for NSW : The Regional Growth Plans will be underpinned by a detailed evidence base, which will demonstrate the proposed solutions and outline any competing interests between objectives for community consideration. 5 In its current form, the metro strategy does not comply with these requirements. Much of the strategy describes what already exists, without showing what is planned for the future. It is too vague and diagrammatic; and fails to present the necessary evidence. The strategy does not ask the fundamental question: where do we want to go?. It does not provide options for alternative visions for Sydney in This is counter to the white paper, which quite rightly proposes that the community be actively involved at the strategic planning stage. If the community is to be engaged as participants in the strategic planning process, choices need to be provided with clear scenarios indicating what needs to happen if each choice is implemented. Having failed to articulate alternative visions for the future, the strategy then fails to provide alternative pathways to the destination. It is a strategy, not a plan, which provides a single pathway to a predetermined destination. There is repeated reference in the strategy to the State Infrastructure Strategy and Transport Master Plan, but because the actual content of these plans is not included in the strategy, it is not possible to see how these three documents support each other. There should be one document that overlays the three strategies so readers can see how infrastructure investment will support this strategy and how it ties into the transport planned for the strategy s time frame. > 8 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

7 While it is positive that employment is now a major element in planning (unlike the strategy s previous iteration three years ago) the new strategy lacks detail and is again not a plan, but rather only the beginnings of one. Sydney needs a plan that is strategic, not a strategy that is not a plan. Hopefully the new draft of the strategy will correct these faults. Alternative strategic plans Fortunately, our profession has within its ranks a number of experts who are able to marry an understanding of demographics and infrastructure with vision. Tim Williams s Super Sydney project, supported by the Institute, has led an invigorating bottom-up discussion, conducted primarily through the internet, as to the kind of city Sydney should become via the direct input of residents. He brought to this project his experiences with French President Nicolas Sarkozy s Le Grand Paris, an innovative design-based exploration of the Paris of the future, a project that provides a model for imaginative top-down planning by expert design teams. Taking the symbiotic relationship of the city of London and England s south-east region as his point of reference, Bob Meyer 6 has suggested that the decentralisation of population growth to cities within a one-hour fast train commute could help to solve some of Sydney s future housing and transport problems. He points out that in the UK, industry has followed the workforce outside the city of London, resulting in a complementary commute of 300,000 Londoners travelling to work outside the city, while 800,000 travel into the city from their homes in regional cities. Rod Simpson s strategy is to create a ring of opportunity linking Sydney back to Parramatta through Rydalmere and Chatswood in the north, and Burwood and Olympic Park in the south via the WestConnex (see image above). In a sense this is an extension of the metro strategy s global economic corridor, which sweeps broadly from Parramatta/Castle Hill through Macquarie Park and the city to the airport. The strength of Simpson s vision is that it refocuses economic activity west of Sydney. What is common to all three visions is that infrastructure is the key, particularly transport. It is the skeleton on which to create the body of the city, its internal organs, its limbs, its features, its personality, its soul. 4. value and importance of the public domain increases with greater density, its enhancement and improvement can only be achieved with long-range strategic planning. It is, therefore, imperative that a regional growth plan for the Sydney metropolitan area which the metro strategy claims to be, but is not includes both growth and urban improvement. They are the two sides of the productive city coin. This cannot be left to local plans. Sydney has been described as a city in which enthusiasm for expanding the metropolis exceeded interest in improving it. 7 We should ask ourselves whether we have moved very far from this thinking. Our plans are filled with growth targets that we are not meeting. In the 20 th century we planned for growth by literally growing and spreading. It worked very well in many respects; the productivity of the city continued to improve, while the growth of the road network and the near universal use of cars provided incredible mobility. This is no longer the case. Sydney cannot remain a world-class city if the status quo is allowed to continue. We have both expanded and infilled housing at relatively low densities, 4. One ring to bind them: the range of employment, recreation education and health opportunities available to 700,000 people living within a a few hundred metres of the the ring by 2030 without using a car. Image: Rod Simpson, Urban Design Program, University of Sydney. Governance is critical The O Farrell Government has made a good start with public transport. It appears to have improved its relationship with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore; the Government s Sydney City Centre Access Strategy and its commitment to the George Street light rail project reveal a capacity to support good ideas, whatever the political affiliation of their sources. The effectiveness of the new planning legislation will be critical to the NSW Government s future success in achieving good metropolitan planning for Sydney. Super Sydney and similar processes such as Design Parramatta provide new ways of engaging and gaining the participation of people across the social spectrum. The legislation needs to achieve a balance between public participation on one hand, and reliable and coherent development approval processes on the other. Open slather for developers is as undesirable as feral NIMBYism. Just as planning to manage growth for its own sake is a sell-out to the economic growth at all costs lobby, so the NSW Government s apparent lack of regard for the public interest relegates the role of government to that of an observer, encouraging an orderly market, without interference, or even advocacy. Design quality The best cities in the world plan to improve and grow. World s best practice demands that areas that intensify also improve, especially if they are to attract high-value jobs. Growth needs intervention, not planning and zoning. Density is the end result of growth and innovation, not its driver. But the community does not accept the intensification of urban development without corresponding urban improvement. While the increasingly further from their occupants places of work. Congestion has increased and the costs of trying to continue to connect places are not affordable. Even the NSW Government has recognised the problem that the City of Sydney has been trying to tackle in recent years. The recently released Sydney City Centre Access Strategy recognises that replacing car parking spaces with cycle lanes can actually improve traffic flow. Recognising the congestion problem, however, is not the same as solving it. The bigger question is how to increase density and at the same time improve the public amenity of the city. Building more apartments on brownfield sites is not going to work if the surrounding streets are clogged with cars, and public transport does not keep pace with population growth. Nor if there are no local shops and supermarkets, or parks where dogs can be walked and children can play. Strategic planning must focus equally on the quality of the built environment and its spatial organisation. That s what our competitor cities are doing. Singapore s economic output may not be as great as Sydney s, but that hasn t stopped it from becoming a regional leader in urban planning. Its government agency, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) houses the Singapore City Gallery, which contains 3-D models of the city and engages school students and the community in developing plans for new and conjectural developments, such as the re-use of the abandoned heavy rail corridor. Reclaimed from the sea from the 1970s to provide room for the long-term expansion of the city, Marina Bay has been planned by the URA as a new growth area adjacent to the existing city centre. The development parcels at Marina Bay are based on an urban grid pattern and extend from the existing city grid network to ensure good connectivity. Sites in Marina Bay are zoned white site to allow developers greater autonomy and flexibility in deciding the most appropriate mix of uses for each site, including housing, offices, shops, hotels, recreation facilities and community spaces. This increases the potential for mixed-use developments and encourages live-work-play communities. The design professions must be involved in planning the future of Sydney. There are hopeful signs. Darling Quarter, the inaugural winner of the City of Sydney Lord Mayor s Prize at this year s NSW Architecture Awards, demonstrates the urbanity that can be achieved in an urban precinct when design leads the way. The same principle applies to the Chatswood Concourse and the Rouse Hill Town Centre. The challenge is to apply these principles on the broad scale of the metropolitan region. Sydney s planning future We are not the only city in the world that is growing. Metropolitan New York will grow by one million people by 2030 quite similar to us. The San Francisco Bay region will grow by some two million over a similar period. Chicago is also growing. So how do they deal with this? Quite simply they plan to grow and improve. These cities have greater regional plans; plans that are strategic, rather than strategies that are not plans. They are strategic and cover the same sort of large geographical areas as our metropolitan strategy. What is the difference between a strategy and a strategic plan? Quite a lot, really. A plan has to commit, even on a regional scale. The greater regional plans link the cities and their regions by transport, natural systems and open space. They form a cohesive framework. The detail is based on comprehensive data. They also focus on physical improvement of the public domain. At the next scale down are county and city plans; these are more concerned with projects, such as transport projects, open space and public domain, as well as new development. Metropolitan New York is creating great places that add open space, create new connections and open up new opportunities for renewal. Stage 3 of the High Line will open up the Hudson Rail Yards. Rather than a monorail to move people, this highly successful recycled railway line is a place to move people it has improved the place. Chicago is also relevant with its CBD located on the edge of the metropolitan area. Chicago has consistently planned for improvement since its visionary plan of 1909 by the architect Daniel Burnham. Its formalised regional park system started in 1903 culminating in the building of Millennium Park in The planning for Sydney s future must begin by withdrawing from our fix on the harbour and the east and focusing instead on the west. We need to plan for the region as a whole and for quality at all levels: street, precinct, suburb and city centre. Joe Agius NSW Chapter President Author s note: I acknowledge the substantial contribution of Philip Graus and Rod Simpson to this article, which has drawn heavily on a suite of advocacy publications currently being developed by the NSW Chapter for release in These publications will outline the Institute s position with regard to policy development at all levels of government and advocate for the public interest to remain at the core of design and planning in New South Wales. Footnotes: 1. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2. Hugh Stretton. Ideas for Australian Cities, 1970, p Matthew Pullinger and Ken Maher. City vision, Architecture Bulletin, Nov/Dec 2009, p R. Freestone. Designing Australia s Cities, UNSW Press, 2007, p NSW Government, White Paper: A New Planning System for NSW, April 2013, p Bob Meyer. Population Forecasting and Long Term Strategic Planning in New Planner, Planning Institute of Australia, September P. Spearritt. Sydney Since the Twenties, Hale and Iremonger, Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

8 Reflections on Public Sydney The publication this year of Public Sydney: Drawing The City by Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill not only marks a monumental moment in reflecting upon the history of built Sydney, but provides an invaluable reference for the city s future designers. Andrew Burns examines the rich tapestry of past and future design at the heart of the landmark publication, while Rachel Neeson and Ken Maher tell the personal stories behind it. The city is an aggregation of structures, in response to a set of conditions, in a particular physicality. Conscious relational approaches by the participating designers offer the possibility of a cohesiveness that may not otherwise be achieved through planning structures. This voluntary code is a 1. submission to the identity of the city, as distinct from tabula rasa, personal interest or banal site analysis. Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill s Public Sydney: Drawing The City is both an invitation to such a voluntary code and a resource to support its formulation. Stories of the city are held within the plan geometries, diligently collected by student collaborators over a 10 year period under the guidance of the authors. Truth resides in the geometry; in that way an almost scientific document is provided, free of interpretation and able to challenge certain orthodoxies. Rather than provide a critical review, which has been so effectively done by others, in this article I seek to respond to Public Sydney: Drawing The City as a generative text. It is far more than an archive and resource; but rather a living document in city making, capable of stimulating ideas. I feel the work is best honoured by raising the ideas that it has stimulated personally, in the hope that it will encourage such responses in others. These ideas are reliant on the knowledge presented in the text. To begin, we may consider Customs House. The building first emerged in 1845 as an austere, two-storey sandstone form without ornamentation, vertically oriented windows set plainly within the mass. The project was typical of Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis s approach; a direct architecture for a city not yet able to afford itself florid expression. In 1887, James Barnet was engaged to enlarge the structure, adding a third floor and expanding the footprint in all directions, dropping an elegant patio in the front of the building with Lewis s original front wall forming the rear of this new space, softened by the columns and awning; the revised composition anchored by wings projecting front and back. Following the common practice of altering late 19 th century public buildings, Walter Liberty Vernon shortly thereafter ( ), removed the pediment from Barnet s previous additions, extruded the form a further two floors and absorbed the large clock face seamlessly into a line of windows. As was his tendency, Vernon sought to introduce a domestic quality into the structure, favouring smaller windows and removing the classically inspired parapet treatment of his predecessor. Can this be 1. Customs House, Sydney c Image: Henry King - as published in Public Sydney: Drawing The City, interpreted as a determined move to reflect the casual quality of the society as it moved towards its own identity rather than its antipodean origins? The next major work undertaken on the structure was near on a century later in the recognisable additions of Tonkin Zulaikha and Jackson, Teece, Chesterman and Willis (JTCW) in They inserted internal glazing and an elegant skillion roof form, set back from the boundaries and crowning the building. This gesture, whether intended or not, claims a conclusion to the building form, preventing further upward extrusion as had been the original pattern of expansion of the building. This hints at an orthodox position within contemporary architecture; a view that asserts Modernism as a break with the past, meaning that as contemporary architects we are no longer directly connected to those earlier works. Strict heritage and high Modernism are two sides of the same coin, each reliant upon the complementary arguments of the other. Hence, this orthodoxy suggests, additions to heritage building forms should be clearly discernable as additions and reversible. Viewed in this way, masonry fabric inevitably becomes considered as simply a nuanced base on which to insert a contrasting structure. What would it mean if this continuity was intact? Imagine if Tonkin Zulaikha had simply extruded the form by an additional level, creating a new base for later extrusion by Lacoste + Stevenson, each layer progressing towards lightness and a framed quality, caused by structural necessity, but pursuing the plasticity of stone as a device to enable continuity. The fact that such a wedding-cake urbanism is almost unthinkable points to the persistence of the idea that we are not connected to that past, yet subject to the Modernism/heritage construct. Interestingly, the Scots Church redevelopment, also by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, contradicts this argument and begins to explore this approach. It does, however, provide a clear distinction between the original sandstone form and the zinc-clad upper volume rather than an ambiguous continuity akin to that employed by Vernon in his numerous alterations of Barnet s structures. Would it not be a fascinating concept for a city, where each new building, built to the extent of the site boundaries, selectively eroded for urban effect and amenity, had to be built with the structural capacity and durability to serve as the foundation for future additions? Peculiar rules make for memorable cities; consider the double height colonnades of central Bologna, Italy, and the stepped forms of New York City in the US. In the absence of authoritarian government, such bespoke planning rules may perhaps be one of the few available techniques to create cities of particular spatial character. It s a more exciting idea than contextual politeness. The Australian Museum presents a further example of the problem of untouchable heritage fabric. The original building form, again by Lewis, was set awkwardly within the site boundaries and presented a double height loggia entry towards William Street. The building was officially opened in 1857, enjoying large crowd volumes and 10,000 patrons in the first week. It was redundant from day one, underestimating the cultural aspiration of the colony. Again, enter Barnet, who would propose substantial additions, resulting in the construction of the western wing that exerts such a dominant presence on College Street. To my interpretation, the centre of this large, symmetrically proportioned form, fronting onto the level gradient of College Street and addressing Hyde Park, presents the natural location for the entry to the institution, rather than the northern frontage, compromised by the relatively steep gradient and arterial presence of William Street. A project presents itself in the remodelling of this College Street frontage, opening the grand order columns of the central bay to create an elevated entry/belvedere, set above street level and enjoying a clear view across College Street and through the green plane of Hyde Park, framed by new columns matching the pilasters of the existing form. With sophisticated geometry, large stone stairs could sweep up from the frontage to enter the sides of this belvedere. This would give the institution the front door and sense of entry that it deserves (and for the purpose of financial viability, needs), and the internal spatial planning can resolve itself from there, gallery spaces flanking a central linear atrium. However, again heritage orthodoxy prevents such possibilities. It is almost unthinkable to so-intrusively remodel the sandstone form, our hands are tied and orthodoxy removes a potential future. These orthodoxies have also caused the absence of a skill set to remodel masonry building forms, pursuing a fulsome continuity and smoothness rather than contrast and predictable shadow line. Internationally, some architects do possess this skill set. It would appear that David Chipperfield educated himself through his oversight of the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany. Caruso St John has demonstrated a capacity to interpret historical form and respond appropriately, as evidenced in their interventions to the Sir John Soane s Museum, leading to such commissions as interior works to Tate Britain. This presents a fresh, confident approach to interventions in historic form, favouring continuity over distinction. In Public Sydney we see practical wisdom applied in early building forms. The staging of Barnet s General Post Office (Stage 1 in 1874, and Stage 2 in 1887) preserves symmetry at any point in time. This means the second stage effectively created a double symmetry, with mirrored emphasis at the quarter points of the facade. However simple, this is an elegant solution for preserving institutional presence despite the necessity of staging. There is much to learn from this direct approach. In viewing the plans through a contemporary lens, surprising qualities emerge. The ensemble of buildings around Sydney Square St Andrew s Cathedral and Sydney Town Hall contain an almost field-like geometry in plan; almost as though the Great Mosque of Cordoba was transposed onto the site. However, in spatial reality this continuity disappears and the opaque edges of each structure that surrounds the square prevent any continuity between interior and exterior. Could this perimeter fabric be opened to enable these continuities and the creation of active edges and penetrating views to the interior, conversely absorbing the square as a continuity of the interiors? This extraordinary publication allows for rich thought about the presence and future of the city. The telling of stories held within the very geometry of the city is a generous act by the authors. Their affection for the city is clear, never more so than in Cantrill s description of the early urban form: The city shone golden in light when viewed from the Cumberland Plain. This golden city is well served by Public Sydney: Drawing The City. Andrew Burns Andrew Burns Architects 12 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

9 Like many architects, I treasure my architectural library and can rarely think of a good reason not to acquire a new book if it has any appeal or relevance. But there are some books within that collection that have a special gravitas. They are actual pieces of culture. Public Sydney: Drawing The City, a careful record, an invaluable reference, a curated collective effort, and a celebrated achievement by my dear friends, holds such a status. As young tutors at the University of Sydney, Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill were principled and impassioned about architecture and the city. I am not sure how we met as I had somehow missed them as design tutors, but I would occasionally invite myself to their Friday morning coffee meetings in the city. It was through this emergent architectural friendship that Philip and I came to work on what I consider to be our first project together my final year thesis. It was entitled Sydney Bedrock and premised an elemental relationship between topography and urban pattern, and its potential for architectural space making. Philip was a supervisor. Philip guided a way of looking, a way thinking, via drawing. Through the overlay of lot grants, subdivision lines and emergent street layouts over contours, we operated like urban detectives across an array of case studies. We painstakingly trawled through Water Board surveys and orthophoto topographic maps from the Lands Department to make our `discoveries, in what was well and truly a pre-google Map era. I was Philip s first employee, or certainly one of the early ones. We practised the same investigative drawing technique through the urban projects in the office. And so I honed my skills and expanded my knowledge via a methodology that became so familiar, as to profoundly shape my own approach to architecture. As I reflect upon this process and its resonance, I am drawn to four fundamentals. History The first is a view of the city as an evolutionary continuum. It requires, by definition, an understanding of how a place has come to be. There is nothing nostalgic about this, rather, it is quite analytical, looking at the trajectory of history through an overlays plan view. It builds knowledge and looks for the physical markings of projects upon place through time. This approach to urban history is well established in Europe. I witnessed it in my time in Barcelona, Peter-John saw it in Venice, and Philip saw it in Paris explicitly through his work with Bruno Fortier and contribution to the Atlas of Paris. In my practice, history is considered as much a component of site as its urban context, its microclimate, its orientation, its views. Tracing The art of hand tracing is meticulous and time consuming. Perhaps its contemporary equivalent is the adjusting of line weights and deleting of superfluous drawing elements needed to prepare good base drawing files, often just as meticulous and time consuming a task. Whether digital or by hand, the agency lies in observation. By drawing what is there and what was there, before we jump to what might be there, we start to actively look at a place. Selection Investigative drawing is selective, focusing on specific aspects of an urban setting in isolation; for instance, the contours and street layouts in Sydney Bedrock, or the exterior and interior public space in Public Sydney: Drawing The City. Rather than simply drawing everything that exists, investigative drawing introduces an editing that allows patterns to become evident and to be read. I consider this editing as part of the design process and these drawings as potentially generative of design. Scale Comparison at a common scale, particularly of like building types, is elemental to urban and architectural analysis. Not only revealing, it is a meaningful way to engage with precedent, and is part of what makes Public Sydney: Drawing The City so very valuable. A unique resource indeed, Public Sydney: Drawing The City is a thoroughly documented compendium of significant buildings and spaces. It is also a documented approach to thinking about our city, which, in my view, is potentially its great power. Rachel Neeson Neeson Murcutt Architects Sydney s Customs House as it stands today. Image: Paul Gosney. 3. Drawing of the Department of Lands building, James Barnet Colonial Architect - taken from Public Sydney: Drawing The City, Image: Aaron Murray/Hill Thalis. Critic Michael Sorkin is quoted advocating the defence of public space: the physical arenas of collective interaction the streets, squares, parks, and plazas of the city are the guarantors of democracy. Public Sydney: Drawing The City cuts to the heart of this worthy proposition. Furthermore the significance of this work is as a talisman of a deep commitment and contribution by its two authors to the culture of architecture in Sydney. To understand this we must look behind the work to its genesis. My connection with Philip and Peter John began when Philip joined my practice as a young graduate prior to his studies at Paris Belleville. At that early time, Philip s interests in understanding and analysing the city were evident. His calm clarity and design talents made him a joy to collaborate with as we worked on projects and competitions. At that time I also got to know Peter John, and had previously engaged with both of them when teaching design studios at the University of Sydney. Their interest in the value of drawing has been unwavering since; but not drawing for drawing s sake, rather drawing as discipline and interpretation. As they explain in the book s introduction it is about: Drawing s multiple values: aiding conception, triggering imagination, and as an analytical tool, evidence and finite representation. This conviction has been central to their teaching steadfastly holding to the Corbusian view of drawing to fix ideas to have ideas as well as mapping the city at scale at a time when this focus and sharp discipline is sadly evaporating from teaching programs in our schools of architecture. When combining this passion for the value of drawing with the discipline of scholarship and investigating writings on the history and meaning of architecture and the city, Philip and Peter John have inspired many students at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of New South Wales to contribute to an enduring body of work now made evident with their publication. So evident is this in the authors, their teaching of a generation of students will surely have an effect on the creative intelligence applied to making this city (and others) through a process of osmosis beyond that also generated by the book itself. More remarkable is the influence of their teaching, as well as their investigation of the city, through individual work in their practices. This contribution to informed urban design strategies, studies and plans has been significant in the city, as has been the making of intelligent and responsive urban architecture. Public Sydney: Drawing The City Authors Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill Publisher Thames and Hudson RRP $99 Members $ The challenges for Sydney, now and in the coming decade, are immense. The realisation of much neglected transport infrastructure, the integration of urban density, the making of new public spaces and places (particularly in the west), the projection of social inclusion and cohesion, the sustenance of the city s ecology and landscape are all necessary in the densifying and maturing city. In an era of governance that too readily values the individual over the collective, the private over the public, the material over the spiritual, all of us involved in the making of the city have much to reflect on in the values and messages that underpin this book. Lifelong dedication, rare talent, and steadfast sustenance of the value of public life and public places have allowed these two architects to exert considerable influence on the culture of Sydney architecture as an art and a science well beyond the pragmatic. The scholarship, design insight and optimism of this work provides a legacy and creates a challenge. As the authors express so cogently, yet modestly Forming public Sydney is an elaborate work that must continue with fresh optimism. Ken Maher Hassell/Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales 14 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

10 1. Drawing the public s attention: The language of architecture Drawing is a skill that enables architecture to be read and understood both on paper and in its built form. David Drinkwater, Aaron Murray and Adrian Chan outline the key principles of drawing, and discuss how these were utilised in Public Sydney: Drawing The City. The culmination of many years of study, research and collation of material, Public Sydney: Drawing The City demanded skilful stewardship to bring it into being. Using large urban plans, detail plans, sections and elevations over time, Public Sydney: Drawing The City illustrates the evolution of Sydney s public and urban architecture. Because the consolidated volume of drawn architecture was produced using multiple contributors, it was of critical importance to adopt a methodology to produce the drawings and ensure consistent quality across the book. The following are the key principles of this methodology of drawing scale, line weight, composition and faithful representation. Scale Scale is a tool used by architects and cartographers to represent a life-size space on a sheet of paper. It allows the author to be selective with the level of detail to be shown, helping the audience understand the project. Before the author can determine the scale in which a space should be drawn, they must first understand the scale of the actual space itself. In the case of a public building, scale is related to the user, us, the human scale. Most people take for granted the scale in which a building is designed, but as architects and designers we need to intimately understand human scale and ergonomics. What size does a step need to be for a person to comfortably access a building? What is the optimum door width and height for people to pass through easily? What is the minimum size a bedroom can be in order to fit a double bed? This understanding was especially important when cataloguing the historic buildings of Sydney where there was very limited information to go on. Sometimes knowing the scale of a building component, like a brick, was all that was needed to check the building had been drawn to the correct size and scale. For an audience to understand a project in its entirety, the author requires them to understand the overall concept (macro) before engaging in the details (micro). In Public Sydney: Drawing The City, a hierarchy of scales were chosen to link the large urban city plan (macro: 1:10,000) to the monuments (micro: 1:400). This allowed the authors to guide the audience through a journey to understand the evolution of Sydney and its public buildings. The cataloguing of buildings and urban spaces at a consistent scale also allowed them to be directly compared to each other in a way that would not normally be possible, giving a greater understanding of the diversity of public architecture in the city. Line weight It is critical in the drawing process to continually assess and refine line weight in order to allow drawings to be viewed at various chosen scales while maintaining the detail and graphical continuity across a page. The chosen weight of a line also dictates the language in which the drawing is to be read; a concept similar to that of using a particular font or bold text to provide emphasis to a word. Graphic intent of how a page is to be read will determine the line weight hierarchy. In Public Sydney: Drawing The City, fine line weights were chosen allowing the greatest level of detail to be shown over different scales without the page appearing overwhelmed with information. Composition White space or negative space provides the canvas on which a drawing can exist, and it can be represented differently depending whether it is a plan, section or elevation. It also exists as a separator between drawings allowing the viewer to distinguish clearly between them. Every element around a building, whether it is big or small, from a street kerb and a footpath, to a tree and street furniture, provides a point of reference and sense of place within a wider setting. In architectural terms, a stand-alone drawing is void of context; it is most successful when referenced and read in conjunction with other drawings. This narrative lies in the form of the composition of drawings. Drawing composition sets the scale and emphasis of the drawings. Precincts in Public Sydney: Drawing The City are like chapters in a book; within each chapter the rhythm of the narrative is set by text and drawings alternating. The full-bleed urban plans are like pauses or breaks; they give a sense of calm to the overwhelming complexity of drawing a city. Faithful representation Prior to the existence of a built form, the beauty of a building can only be assessed through scale drawings or a physical model. To faithfully draw something is to be honest in its portrayal. Faithful representation asks that buildings be evaluated critically when selecting the ideas that comprise them, which in turn determines how best to communicate 2. them. By analysing these aspects, the drawing can be presented with a purpose and clarity that has inherent richness. The principles used to define a drawing scale, line weight and composition enable it to show intricate detail or large urban scale detail simultaneously. A sound understanding of the fundamentals of drawing opens up opportunities to extend the techniques used and ensures the continued evolution of the language of drawing. Design and documentation Quality drawings are the embodiment of quality architecture. The more comprehensively a building is designed and documented, the easier it is to discover, understand and analyse the ideas of the building. The intent is to be able to build the drawing, having the built form transcend the technical documentation to create the design/ vision of the author. With the advancement of BIM software the industry is adapting to modelling a whole building as you would construct it. BIM gives you nowhere to hide; it is no longer a snapshot in time where you can choose what to draw and what not to draw. 1. Detail drawing of Sydney Opera House (West elevation). Image: David Drinkwater. 2. Detail of the sails of Sydney Opera House. Image: Brett Boardman. Drawing architecture with clarity and purpose requires thought and an understanding of the embedded meaning of the line and how a drawing should be constructed. Technical drawings have depth, a thickness that shows general arrangement and scope with composition and detail simultaneously; they are distinct from images that are composed of elements and graphics. Each line has an inherent relationship to one another, a set-out point, an alignment, or an anchor point for being it is not just a random mark on a page. Line drawings represent complex systems comprising many individual components and dissimilar materials that are carefully choreographed into a unified whole: the basis for architecture to come to fruition. As a profession, a technical drawing methodology underpins the principal tool used to enable the lead building contractor to deliver a building and the architect to create architecture. Education Unfortunately, the current school of thought in architectural education is to focus on the image, the object, the blob. There is a worrying lack of training in the area of drawing skills, methodology and the meaning of the line. Drawing and drafting are treated as a lesser form of knowledge, the technical mechanics of architecture; an attitude that flippantly overlooks drawing as a powerful educational tool in its own right. To undervalue or disregard drawing is to undermine the value of architecture. To draw something is to endeavour to understand it, it is like visiting a visual playground of thoughts to test, develop and understand ideas. A drawing can be broken down into simpler parts, converting them into diagrams and symbols commonly used to understand complex things and concepts at a glance. Drawing is a skill that enables architecture to be read and understood both on paper and in its built form. A skill so fundamental to our profession that it should be taught by schools of architecture. Adrian Chan, Hill Thalis Aaron Murray, Hill Thalis David Drinkwater, Graham Bell Bowman Architects 16 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

11 government architect James Barnet: A path through his city Non-autonomous architecture A curated walk through the streets of Sydney s CBD highlights three open squares and the historic public buildings that address them. Dr Peter Kohane is your guide. NSW Government Architect Peter Poulet believes understanding and incorporating the public interest is fundamental to the future of architecture. Cities have marvellous paths along which many of us daily make our way. Perhaps the finest in Sydney extends from Circular Quay to Martin Place by way of interconnected sunlit public spaces and shaded streets. I will describe this thoroughfare, along with three major public structures, to argue that it exemplifies an ideal of decorum in classically derived architecture and urbanism. The buildings are: Customs House, the Department of Lands and the General Post Office. The Colonial Architect James Barnet was one of several government appointed architects who over time extended Customs House. However, he was the primary designer for the two other schemes. The square in front of Customs House is the place to begin. The space has an urbanity derived from the main facade of Customs House on the southern edge. In my view this facade is grand but ungainly; the result of an extensive early 20th century scheme that destroyed the fine proportions of Barnet s additions. With Barnet s classically inspired design in mind, one can move to the west side of Customs House, walking up Loftus Street to enter triangular Macquarie Place. Although landscaped, it is another urban space with buildings on all three sides. The Department of Lands (begun in 1876) is the only public edifice and appropriately forms the entire southern boundary, making a forceful statement by delimiting space and closing the view ahead. This front is enriched by the magnificent public entrance and four loggias on the first and second levels, three of which have unfortunately been glazed in. The building also has a clock tower that is visible from the north but set within the overall building to close the vistas along Spring and Bent Streets. When leaving Macquarie Place by the steps to Bridge Street, one must turn to the left or right and proceed to bustling, noisy Pitt 18 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Street. Hurrying on, relief from the congestion is sought. One is therefore pleased to look ahead through the deep shadows and, on a fine day, identify in the distance the sunlit north-east corner of the second stage to the General Post Office (1887). Holding our attention, it draws us forward, with the extensive facade gradually coming into view, along with the space it addresses, the western section of Martin Place. The first two stages, both by James Barnet, were originally characterised by a striking contrast between horizontal elements, including the arcade and the cornice, and the vertical tower: the former heightens the perceived ascent of the latter. The purity of the composition, however, was compromised by the later addition of an attic; with its all too visible mansard roof and large windows imparting a sense of movement at odds with what had to remain the capping of the building, the overhanging cornice. The space in front of the General Post Office is set apart from the rest of Martin Place that, rising to Macquarie Street, has a more commercial character, serving as the home for banks and office buildings. Although the General Post Office is now the front to a bank and hotel, the memory of its role as a major 19th century civic institution remains. The building was constructed prior to the urban setting it addresses. This space, which was later extended across Pitt Street to create the entire Martin Place, has a unique meaning. The backdrop is the majestic General Post Office and the ground is level, two factors encouraging citizens to gather. This public presence was reinforced in 1927, when the Cenotaph was located on an axis with the building s tower and entrance. I believe Martin Place is Sydney s finest civic precinct, and its western end is an appropriate culmination to the journey that began at Circular Quay. I have isolated this path for its aesthetic qualities and contribution to public life. Its sequential, even rhythmic, expansion and contraction of spaces imbued with different qualities of light and sound seems to have been orchestrated for the observer, who delights in the constantly shifting perspectives. No street is axially aligned with the centre of an open space and its building. Indeed, a tangential and picturesque approach enhances the sense of arrival in Macquarie Place and Martin Place, their breadth appropriate for viewing the public architecture. While these places, and the one connected to Customs House, are enjoyed by the individual moving through the city, they can also be valued in terms of the pleasure people derive from appearing in public. The buildings, streets and squares provide settings for citizens to learn about themselves through engagement with others. The three open squares are especially important. Within each, the Customs House, the Department of Lands or the General Post Office is a resplendent sunlit sandstone facade. An individual admires the building, while seeing other citizens in front of, or within, grand entrances and colonnades, loggias or arcades; and these people are often looking back. One has entered a special domain where the building, functioning as a theatrical facade, promotes reciprocity of gazes. Whether looking to or from the building, people are caught up in a social event, the performance of which creates the public realm. The three buildings connected to open spaces and intermediary streets comprise a discrete ensemble within the larger city. Dr Peter Kohane Faculty of the Built Environment University of New South Wales In the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Architecture Bulletin, I wrote of the need for architects to engage better with politics, communities and all the other players that make up a rich and varied society. My primary rationale was that it would be good for architects, and our society more widely, to become thought leaders and influencers because we bring particular skills and capabilities to the table. Today I hold even more closely to this premise as I have now spent 18 months in the role of Government Architect and see clearly the opportunity for creative people (read architects) to improve the processes and outcomes of engagement and creative endeavour. However, to truly capitalise on our need to do things differently, which potentially centres creative people and industries as drivers of growth in the Western world, we need to let go of some of our purist predispositions and immerse ourselves in the current everyday world to be nourished and inspired. For too long, architects have been marginalised because of our obsession with purity, order and aesthetics, and our detachment from the complexities of the everyday. To look at many of the photographs published in various architectural journals is to see an artificially constructed environment often devoid of people. When people are seen they are props or secondary to the building or space described, caricaturing the everyday, the reality we live with yet deny publicly in our work. This does not assist us to be seen as people who understand and empathise with others and can design and build socially responsible and appropriate architecture. At worst it is seen as elitist and self-serving. The study of biological systems leads us to an understanding of our world as interdependent and contingent. Furthermore, understanding of our natural world as a closed system with finite resources has led to a philosophy of preservation, recycling and renewable resources. While this has driven our architecture in a particular way, our capacity to understand complex systems and dependencies, as our training suggests, has been truncated because of a deeply ingrained focus on the pursuit of purity and singularity. Our capacity as integrators and enablers is eroded by our doggedness. We are yet to truly engage with sustainability or people in an integrated or humanistic way. We need to understand and work with our context to regain our standing, and shape the future of the discourse and the future of our places. The everyday world is a disordered mess from which architecture has retreated, and this retreat, says Jeremy Till, is deluded. Architecture must engage with the inescapable reality of the world; in that engagement is the potential for a The world of experts is in decline, everyone is connected, everyone has an opinion, and everyone is heard. This reality further widens the divide between how we speak among ourselves, how we define our profession and what the public expects of us and how we actually practice our profession. reformulation of architectural practice. Contingency should be seen as an opportunity not a threat...architecture has to work (socially, spatially) by coping with the flux and vagaries of everyday life. 1 This discourse raises the prospect of architects engaged with their community in a collaborative and equal relationship. This is certainly the expectation of most people and an opportunity for architects and architecture to play a much more meaningful and relevant role. The urgency of this change to how we do business is compounded by the democratisation of information knowledge and opinion. The world of experts is in decline, everyone is connected, everyone has an opinion, and everyone is heard. This reality further widens the divide between how we speak among ourselves, how we define our profession and what the public expects of us and how we actually practice our profession. This disjuncture will persist and grow until we recognise that our very existence is dependent on things outside of architecture. Despite the claims of autonomy, purity and control that architects like to make about their practice, architecture is buffeted by uncertainty and contingency. Circumstances invariably intervene to upset the architect s best-laid plans at every stage in the process, from design through construction to occupancy. Architects, however, tend to deny this, fearing contingency and preferring to pursue perfection. Architecture must move from a reliance on the impulsive imagination of lone genius to a confidence in the collaborative ethical imagination, from clinging to notions of total control to an intentional acceptance of letting go.2 Peter Poulet NSW Government Architect Footnotes 1. Jeremy Till. Architecture Depends, The MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ibid. Architecture Bulletin Spring

12 Parramatta Parramatta s streets, parks and public spaces are the location for the city s social and civic life; the Design Parramatta project aimed to inspire and coordinate their forthcoming reinvigoration. The project defined a unique character and potential for each of these public spaces and simultaneously created an enduring structure for the city through a city-wide Public Domain Framework Plan, as Project Leader Kati Westlake explains. By 2050 there will be more people living west of Auburn than east, all needing access to interesting jobs, education, culture and entertainment; in short a good city centre. Parramatta is in the process of stepping up to become the Western CBD. Parramatta City Council, which to date has primarily focused on managing a large local government area, must now also champion and help deliver a centre with the complexity, range of jobs and lifestyle that people expect of a modern city. Just as the revitalisation of Melbourne and Sydney s public spaces and streets have become tangible evidence of these cities progress and sophistication, the transformation of Parramatta will be supported by public space improvements. In colonised Australia s early years Parramatta was equal in size to Sydney, but dwindled into second gear after the railway and freeway networks created alternative transport connections, and the farms became low-density suburbs. Its being in second gear meant that Parramatta did not experience the successive layers of design, or testing of a range of potential projects that accompanied the ongoing densification of Sydney. Design initiatives that have benefited Sydney City include: the 1909 Royal Commission, Bradfield s transport proposals and the Sydney Spaces and Priority Design projects. The Sydney Spaces project, coordinated by Helen Lochhead in 1996, was the main urban design strategy underpinning Sydney s most recent wave of revitalisation. In this project, various design teams were charged with generating a concept for identified streets, parks and public spaces, and the projects were published as an ensemble. This process ensured that the individual projects gained gravitas by being presented as integral parts of a larger network; it also meant that a plausible future context was developed and documented that subsequent projects and design development would be able to respond to. Not least, Sydney Spaces showed how a vibrant city public domain could be generated by a community of designers and design thinking; big and micro, formal and funky, design and art, landscape and engineering and the interplay between them. Most projects in Sydney Spaces subsequently became sites in the Priority Design projects that were designed and built in the late 1990s, and today nearly all of them have been implemented contributing to a much improved and livelier Sydney. It was both exciting and unprecedented when Parramatta City Council CEO, Dr Rob Lang s response to a proposal for a large and coordinated streetscape design project for George Street, Parramatta was to say, Why stop at George? We need a master plan for the whole city. Initially it was suggested that a single design consultancy should be engaged to develop Parramatta s Public Domain Framework Plan. Having been involved with the Sydney Spaces project I saw firsthand how it generated the revitalisation of many of Sydney s best public spaces, and created a stronger design culture at the city s council; I was keen to use a similar process for Parramatta. Due to Helen Lochhead s prior involvement, and the limited resourcing at Parramatta, we engaged the Government Architect s Office (GAO) to assist. Callantha Brigham from GAO was a key team member who helped evolve the project in detail. Design Parramatta differed from Sydney Spaces in some areas, especially in the program structure, which invited the sharing of ideas to generate a design discussion about the city. Design discussion was created through group presentations, panel feedback, invited discussion, a website and a documentary film. While the actual design and workshop component of Design Parramatta lasted six weeks, the whole project took nearly a year to set up and run. There were a number of phases to this process. Places (sites) were sorted into typical and special streets and public places, and special places were included as Design Parramatta s River Square re-imagined by JAAA, Environmental Partnerships, Turf Design Studio, Roberts Day, Equatica and Electrolight. Image: Parramatta City Council. Premium public spaces, with their diversity of functions, multitude of people, fine views and fresh air obviously have something to offer that is in great demand in society today. Jan Gehl, Public Spaces Public Life. Parramatta sites. Multidisciplinary teams of designers and artists were invited to compete to be selected to participate. A website was developed with an interactive component to publicise the project and to act as a reference library and facilitate designers sharing work in progress. Consistent background material and resources were collated and 16 targeted briefs were written and provided to all successful teams to ensure an informed approach. All-day workshops were facilitated where teams presented to a panel and interested council officers, and received feedback and information about related sites. A film was commissioned to document the process, different approaches to site, design, teamwork and placemaking. At completion, the individual concept designs, including text and images, were combined to form The Parramatta City Centre Public Domain Framework Plan that would guide future public domain designs in Parramatta over the next 20 years. The framework plan and projects were illustrated by perspective images to help communicate with councillors and the community, engage them in the ongoing design development, and also to assist with lobbying for funds. The combined Public Domain Framework Plan was presented to Parramatta City Council for adoption to ensure the projects would be afforded ongoing budgets allowing for construction. The teams submissions were edited for publication in the Design Parramatta document. A general project structure existed at the beginning, however, Design Parramatta took on a life of its own, generated in part by the enthusiasm of each new participant and their creative contributions. Eighty-two multidisciplinary teams of architects, urban designers, landscape architects and artists applied to be part of the project, from which the final 19 project teams were selected. In addition, Urban Design students from the University of Sydney undertook the project as > 20 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

13 2. 2. The Design Parramatta sites. Image: Parramatta City Council. a design studio and Professors James Weirick and Rod Simpson provided reviews at the workshops. The individual schemes that resulted all have merit as a proposition for their particular site. They will provide both a springboard for the next design stage and provide an initial vision that can be used to canvas community input. Together these projects form a matrix of the future context that will be referenced as any single design or nearby building is subsequently developed. Some teams also proposed concepts that went well beyond the scope of the original brief and these, plus the general level of debate about the city and incredible richness of design ideas, were the unexpected revelations of Design Parramatta. For example: The George Street Team proposed a revised built form as well as a grand sequence of public spaces to reinterpret George Street s original alignment that will inform Parramatta s Development Control Plan The Ring Road Team used film and urban mapping to canvas community views about Parramatta, identify a whole new city neighbourhood, and turned a large barrier road into a potential stitching element The Freemason s Arms Lanes Team, showed how by coordinating waste storage, referencing existing arts programs and combining leftover spaces, a small lane could be transformed by the local community, providing a much stronger resonance than a simple civic upgrade undertaken by the city A four kilometre green parkland loop comprising existing and new parks and tree-lined avenues, which could become a valuable lung and recreation focus for the city, was proposed by the Clay Cliff Parklands Team The second city was a generally agreed proposition that many teams developed to describe the network of car-park lanes and alleyways, which helped develop a richer spatial typology for the city and layering of character. Now the Framework Plan has been adopted, the next steps for Design Parramatta will involve engaging with the community and councillors for their response to prioritised projects to further develop them. Design Parramatta was intended as a game-changer for Parramatta, and its ultimate success will only be known over time. It felt as though the project contributed new energy to the city and allowed many designers to become more aware of this part of Sydney and its particular issues and opportunities. The Framework Plan, created through discourse by many, is more truly reflective of a democratic and growing city. It can be used with confidence, combining as it does the ideas and expertise of so many professionals. Further, the process of developing meaningful urban strategy has been reframed from being a slightly arcane process of narrow professional concern into an inspiring creative process of more general interest by Doppio s poppy graphics and Carli Leimbach s film. To provide security and confidence to the community that their affairs are being prudently managed, councils are generally slow and steady operations; this can make them less likely to be innovative or support creative approaches. However, creative teamwork was implicit in Design Parramatta, and we were lucky to be able to host it. The project could not have been realised without many individuals working together and going the extra mile to make something new. In particular the incredible design work and collaboration undertaken by the Design Parramatta project teams was intrinsic. Design Parramatta also fostered creative partnerships within Parramatta City Council and between council and other stakeholders, and these will assist in designing and building Parramatta into the city it aspires to be. Design Parramatta Core Project Team Kati Westlake, Urban Design, Parramatta City Council Andrew Tam, Urban Design, Parramatta City Council Steve Ellis, Place Services, Parramatta City Council Callantha Brigham, Architect, Government Architect s Office Project A Place in the Sun A Space for Urban Follies Artworks for Lonely Laneways Barrack Lane Batman Walk Charles Street Square Church Street Mall Clay Cliff Creek Parklands Erby Place and Lane 13 Freemason s Arms Lane George Street Horwood Avenue Civic Link Macquarie Street Parramatta City Ring Road Parranet Phillip Street River Square Smith and Station Streets Wentworth Avenue Carpark and Lanes Team 3-4. The Lot propose to reawaken Freemason s Arms Lane for use as theatre for the city. Images: The Lot (Heidi Axelsen, Hugo Moline and Adriano Pupilli). Nuala Collins, Kelly Doley, Nadia Wagner and Charlotte Karlsson Old Eyes New Eyes Studio Damien Butler Group of Like Minded Designers Andrew Burns and Brook Andrew Context Landscape Design, Zoe Spiegal, CM+ and Urban Art Projects JMD Design, Lacoste + Stevenson, Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke, Toko and Pamela See GAO Landscape, Parramatta City Council landscape, Equatica and Lightwell DRAW, Tyrell Studio, Dr L. Stickells and Dr Z. Begg The Lot (Heidi Axelson, Hugo Moline and Adriano Pupilli) Hill Thalis Architecture+ Urban Projects, Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture and Turpin Crawford Studio Gallagher Ridenour, Redshift and Equatica Cox Richardson Architects and Planners, Occulus and Parsons Brinkerhoff Terroir, Aspect Studio, U. Lab, and Richard Goodwin Mulloway Studio and Ernest Edmonds Hassell JAAA, Environmental Partnerships, Turf Design Studio, Roberts Day, Equatica and Electrolight Nobbs Radford Architects, Carmichael Studios and Suzie Idiens BKK Architects, Glas Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, Electrolyte and Renew Australia 22 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

14 Canberra at a crossroad Centred on a lake, and surrounded by hills, Canberra s layout remains highly constrained by historical elements of the Griffin Plan. It now finds itself facing a new crossroad, as Brian Binning explains. Shortly after the new National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) was established in 1958, it needed to modify Walter Burley Griffin s founding plan for Canberra. This was a consequence of the rapid growth of population and employment fuelled by the decision to consolidate Commonwealth functions in the new capital city. These initiatives coincided with postwar Modernism, characterised by increased provision of social welfare, along with the need for additional physical infrastructure and culturally supportive settings. Especially for Canberra, this was a period of benign statism. The NCDC could draw freely on the public land acquired for the capital to plan and build schools, health facilities, parklands and garden suburbs with their mix of public and private housing. To these ends, it pioneered advanced program management, sophisticated land-use transport planning, and high-quality architecture. It used eminent consulting resources, and assembled a highly skilled staff. The resulting planning and architecture took on similar modernist forms. The centre of the capital was to be kept free of congestion by directing in-migrating Commonwealth departments to locate in buildings built by the NCDC in the centres of a series of dispersed new towns. Many new residents were able to live close to their place of work. For others, the wider metropolitan area was easily accessed by parkways sited in the open spaces that framed the Y-shaped metropolis. The extensive centre of the capital was dominated by its lake and surrounding landscaping, broken only by a carefully orchestrated assemblage of modern landmark buildings: the High Court, the National Library of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Department of Defence complex. These were linked by bridge crossings and formal avenues, which remained uncongested. While Griffin s centre combined beaux arts symbolism with the naturalistic urbanism of the Prarie School, the NCDC consciously followed the model provided by Le Corbusier s Chandigarh. By bringing together modernist planning and architecture, the NCDC realised a postwar dream: Canberra became the completely commodious Bush Capital. The dilemma: the emergence of market demand for re-centralisation In 1988, the life of the NCDC was terminated because the task of developing the city to a critical mass was seen as complete. Already, the Commonwealth no longer built its own offices, and had relegated their construction to the private sector. So at the same time that the ACT Government assumed control, a much higher proportion of investors in new office construction sought to maximise their financial returns by taking up vacant sites in the centre of the city. Central employment was 45,000 in 1984, and the NCDC proposed to limit this to 64,000 69,000 when the metropolitan population reached 400,000. Canberra s population reached 365,000 in By then the total employment within an extended centre, which includes developments around the airport, had risen to approximately 130,000. The new ACT 2012 Planning Strategy does not limit further development. As only about 16 per cent of central Canberra jobs are filled by locals, this means there has already been a significant rise in the volumes of workers commuting into the centre. The NCDC s Y-Plan envisaged further decentralisation to additional new towns in New South Wales, but the new Territory Government preferred to increase its income from the sale of Territory land, which it now controlled. Ignoring the NCDC s open-space settings, the Territory Government then consistently adopted a more circular (as opposed to lineal) metropolitan pattern of settlements, developing a new town for 80,000 people to the west of central Canberra. Yet the bulk of new employment had developed to the east, along the axis reaching from Civic to the airport, Fyshwick, Department of Defence facilities, and into New South Wales. These changes have increased congestion in the centre, a situation the Y-Plan sought to avoid; the NCDC had previously planned to continue decentralisation into further new towns until the population reached 500,000. Ironically, these changes have triggered the need for a faster transition to a more sustainable postmodern metropolis, along with the dilemma of both confronting and paying for the high cost of making this change. Reflecting the postmodern agendas of respect for context and sustainability, the internal character of the urban form is also changing, undergoing consolidation most evident in the town centres. There, mixed-use and apartment developments are successfully replacing tracts of surface parking. Encouraging similar change in the metropolitan centre is far more problematic. Historic cities, developed over many centuries, already have densely built-up Peter Harrison s Approach to the Metropolitan Plan of Canberra from Architecture in Australia, August Image: Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) Digital Archive. metropolitan centres. Area cordons, road pricing, costly commuter parking and better public transport have all played a part in this change. Yet Canberra with one of the highest levels of car ownership in Australia, with its rising use of the car for commuting, and a declining level of public transport use (currently only 8 per cent) has failed to adequately detail initiatives that would change this trend. Any postmodern reassertion of Griffin s plan structure immediately heightens the clash between a car-oriented city and one that seeks to achieve the benefits of a denser city without compromising its heritage. The need: a return to holistic planning that accommodates market demands Canberra s history of state-directed decentralisation, allied to underdevelopment of the central area, as favoured by NCDC is now undergoing a somersault, with very rapid re-centralisation of employment being driven by a reversion to normal market forces. Thus far, both Commonwealth and Territory Governments acknowledge the problem in principle, but have shown little appreciation of the relative speeds and dimensions at which different phenomena are driving urban change. Increases in centralised employment are already taking place at a far faster rate than are changes to the transport infrastructure. There is insufficient recognition of the high public and monetary costs involved, and of how these might be met. Earlier generations of town planners have always accepted the logic of forging a nexus between broad land-use transport strategies and critical sub-areas. Even the American supermarket urban structure plans of the 1960s usually included a program for their centres, and the US Federal Government often covered implementation costs. For Canberra, evaluating the merits of alternative solutions to subsidiary areas within its central area can only be carried out by evaluating local options against the needs of that area as a whole. In this context, the current proposal to proceed with separate local master plans is redundant. The challenge of reconciling tensions in planning and managing change To accommodate a more centralised and market-oriented city of Canberra, both the Commonwealth and Territory Governments will need to make significant investment in planning and infrastructure. To maintain Canberra s reputation for excellence in planning, one approach to quickly investigating the opportunities presented by the new ACT 2012 Planning Strategy could be for the Commonwealth and Territory Governments to involve the private sector and professions by jointly sponsoring invited submissions in an international competition for a new central area plan. A competition could develop innovative models for private sector involvement in development, such as wholly or partly privatised public transport supported by increased pricing on access to the central area by car. Urban economists have traditionally taken the view that metropolitan decentralisation results from congestion of the urban core. NCDC countered this. Governments will always be tempted to avoid issues of cost and acceptability that arise from market-driven momentum toward re-centralisation, only to slide backwards to a position where congestion, pollution, and high user costs are tolerated. That would ultimately create the obverse outcome, in which a new round of decentralisation becomes self-generating, but at high cost to the general public. That is the unfortunate choice so often made by other state governments. A column by Angela Shanahan in The Australian (13 November 2010) coincidentally characterised Canberra s planning morass for bringing it to a crossroad, criticising a betrayal of the suburban dreams of ordinary folk by coffee-crazed sophisticates desperate to transform Canberra. Yet it is clear that the lifestyles and needs of Canberra have shifted; and in this respect, the concepts that underlie postmodern urbanism represent more than simply a passing fashion. Indeed, if used pragmatically, they can be used to repair the leftover spaces inherited from NCDC s Modernism, and might allow Griffin s vision to grow to sensible adulthood. Brian Binning holds an M. Arch in Urban Design from Illinois State University, was a director in Colin Buchanan and Partners, and played a senior role in the National Capital Development Commission before becoming head of Strategic Planning and Urban Design for the National Capital Authority. Now retired, he is a former Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia. Postmodern Urbanism For Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism is defined relative to the previous Modernism by: first, a return to historicism and a renewed search for urbanity; second, a new emphasis on contextualism, regionalism, site/place, pluralism, and the search for character and populism; third, the renewed use of decoration, ornamentation, symbolism, humour, collage, and human scale (among others); and fourth, a humble and anti-utopian apoliticism that no longer seeks ideal solutions on a large scale with associated characteristics of small-scale, legible, neo-traditional projects that cater to consumer tastes and involve citizen participation (to name a few of its key elements). Nan Ellin. Postmodern Urbanism, Princeton Architectural Press, Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Architecture Bulletin Spring

15 review Nexus 2013 This year s Nexus 2013 Australia and New Zealand Student Architecture Congress, hosted by the University of Newcastle, enlightened all participants to the reality that architects must significantly broaden their disciplinary horizons, as Marly Swanson Wood and Angus Hardwick discovered. C ompensating for a flux in technological advancement, architects and designers are attempting to reinterpret the forces of globalisation and soothe the subsequent identity crises of many cities around the world. Peter Tonkin (Tonkin Zulaikha Greer) opened his talk with the advice that students should acquire soft skills in being a good politician to successfully navigate the treacherous socio-political waters of our trade in a new era. Speakers addressed the overarching issue of future practice through their chosen design language. Of these conceptual and pragmatic processes, one solution to our 20th century problems came as a surprise: the proposition from Jan van Schaik (Minifie van Schaik) that sometimes nothing is the best thing to do. A contemporary take on the architectural hubris was eloquently made by Rory Hyde. In his quest to overturn the inherited assumptions of design professions, Hyde plunged into provocative rhetoric that prompted the audience to question not only the future of the architectural profession, but whether we ourselves may adopt one of the conceived personas that Hyde predicts will embody future practice: the civic entrepreneur; the double agent; or the strategic designer. During the congress, metaphoric conceptualisation extended to the city itself. Both Richard Francis-Jones (FJMT) and Peter Tonkin unfurled their categorical understanding of the city as having various states of being, city as utopia as assemblage as nest, describing how a city begins to project paradoxical nuances as an individual s lifeworld may develop in 26 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013 Book review divergence with a projected national identity. Tonkin explored the nation s capital, Canberra, expressing his future hopes for a real city urbanity at last. We were also privileged to have Marcel Acosta from the National Capital Planning Commission in the US present to elaborate on emerging national identities in [capital] cities steeped in political iconography. Acosta took the position that the relevance of nationalism becomes somewhat diminished over time; memorials lose meaning as the local city envelopes the federal and symbolic urban agenda. This shift in paradigm, Acosta believes, is due to an emerging generational mindset through youth movement. Acosta left us with the empowering proclamation, your actions, your plans and what you do will affect your city. Marly Swanson Wood Master of Architecture, University of Newcastle T he congress and its speakers reflect a time and issue of concern to the creative directors. Nexus 2013 focused on cities and how they develop; a critical issue for Newcastle. I saw this expressed in the tensions between top-down governmental adjustments to a city s fabric, and the bottom-up approaches where projects emerge from the complex relationships between people and technological concerns. Hedwig Heinsman, from the Amsterdam practice DUS Architects, presented projects that were driven by an aspiration to change the rules of a city or neighbourhood by designing the script or process. These included a new open-source project DUS have been developing that aims to print a 3-D copy of a traditional Amsterdam canal house. They have built themselves a giant 3-D printer called the KamerMaker, put it outside in a park, opened it up to the people, and started work. The DIY theme continued with French duo Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu from Atelier d architecture autogérée (Studio for self-managed architecture). Their emergent, bottom-up projects, explore the potential agencies that architectural interventions can adopt to engage social groups and develop a sense of social place within the dense framework of Paris. Significant projects like Ecobox (now in its third location and entirely run by its users), use urban agriculture (in itself not a new or particularly groundbreaking idea) and community plots as a catalyst for addressing community concerns and generating dialogue between members of the community. Mr Renew Newcastle/Renew Australia, Marcus Westbury, championed non-government, individual-driven ideas as the most productive way of addressing common economic and social concerns. On the opposing side, the governmental planning perspective as presented by Marcel Acosta of the National Capital Planning Commission (US), David Gordon of Queen s University (Canada), and Pedro Junqueira Vilela from the Brazilian Federal District Government uncovered an uncomfortable dilemma where people are pushed out of their cities by sweeping urban changes assigned from above. The tradition of students launching thought-provoking and topical inquiries is alive and well. Angus Hardwick SONA Vice-President, Bachelor of Architectural Studies (Honours), University of New South Wales A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America Author Vishaan Chakrabarti Publisher Metropolis Books RRP $39.95 Members $ AGSU Australian Graduate School of Urbanism My first response to the title was that it was about the dissolution of boundaries, to allow, as David Suzuki said in Sydney in September, nature to take its course, as it would, heedless of artificial lines; a country of cities interconnecting across boundaries and borders. Unfortunately the book doesn t go that far, but it does present a strong manifesto for intensity of density; pulling the exurban into hyper-dense cities and arguing this as the panacea to the problems of the nation (America, that is). However, there are lessons for all, best summed up in a foreword by Norman Foster in terms of we have to build to higher densities...we must create neighbourhoods that combine workplaces with housing and where transport connections...and amenities are within walking or cycling distance.... The author rails against the subsidies that produce an inefficient suburbia that fuels an economy of highways, houses and hedges and paints clearly the productivity of densification in a country of cities, of trains, towers and trees. City protagonists, Jane Jacobs and Edward Glaeser are well referenced, as is the data proving the arguments, led by evidence that the City of Chicago s productivity is demonstrably greater than those of 40 US states. The keys to success focus on incentives, as well as the mandate to support density with infrastructure; broadening this to include social systems in an infrastructure of opportunity is an important step forward for planning. Issues of affordability and finance are met head on and the manifesto concludes with a call to arms...transformation... a voice that speaks outside of politics...the hand on heart spirit continues... we can build... we must... and while this is rallying, it demonstrates a frustration to be heard and some naivety. It is a primer worthy of the planning and urban design schools, strategic planners in practice, those involved in deciding the course of a city s future, and those in the treasuries of our governments to understand the benefits of a new paradigm to increase productivity, sustainability and community wellbeing. Richard Dinham LFRAIA AGSU Australia s leading graduate school of urban policy and design research is pleased to announce a series of new post-professional and research-based masters degrees. - Master of Urban Policy & Strategy - Master of Philosophy Public private partnerships and the provision of infrastructure - Master of Philosophy Housing Policy - Master of Philosophy Writing the City Never Stand Still Nexus Q&A with guest speakers (r-l) Timothy Moore, Hedwig Heinsman and Rory Hyde. Image: Australian Institute of Architects. Built Environment - Master of Philosophy Design Research Scholarships are available. For more information visit: be.unsw.edu.au/agsu CRICOS 00098G

16 obituary When Quality Matters... Ross Langdon ( ) I like to think that Ross Langdon is still in Africa somewhere, awakening in the cool of the day to instruct local builders on the assembly of a roof, or ascending a hill to watch the sun rise over a new site. After a peripatetic early life, East Africa is where Ross recently found his home. Designing eco-lodges, an HIV/ Aids clinic, and a variety of other community projects, he traversed Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, adopting his formidable architectural skills to the local vernacular. In 2011 he met Elif Yavuz, a Dutch-born doctoral graduate, in Kampala. A senior vaccines researcher for the Clinton Foundation, Elif was Ross s equal in intellect and ambition, and deepened his appreciation for his adoptive continent. In his 2012 TEDx talk on Chameleon Architecture you can witness Ross s personal architectural philosophy, inspired by the vibrant people and landscapes of Africa, taking shape. It was with despair that I learned of the death of Ross, Elif and their unborn child in the 21 September terrorist attack on Nairobi s Westgate Mall. There can be no sense to this tragic loss, no consolation or cautionary tale. But in paying tribute to an extraordinary talent, I hope that his example will serve as inspiration to all Australian architects. Born in Brisbane, Ross spent his childhood in the remote and rugged environment of the Tasman Peninsula. He commenced architecture studies at the University of Tasmania, then in 2000 relocated to the University of Sydney. Ross s classmates remember him as a tireless, driven student. Joint winner of the 2004 Superstudio student architecture competition, he graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours and a university medal. He first worked for architect Sam Marshall and established a successful ongoing collaboration with Drew Heath. In 2005 he was awarded a British Council Realise Your Dream scholarship to join Zaha Hadid Architects in London. He subsequently worked in the offices of leading architects John McAslan and David Adjaye. In 2008, Ross won first prize in an international ideas competition for a cultural centre in Bodø, Norway. He founded Langdon Reis Zahn Architects with competition collaborators, Ana Reis and Matthias Zahn, and the practice went on to achieve further success, receiving the Europan 10 first prize for a master plan for the Norwegian town of Vardø. In 2009, Ross was featured as one of Monument magazine s Next Generation of Australian artists, architects and designers. While based in London, he had a chance encounter with Praveen Moman, founder of ecotourism company Volcanoes Safaris. This lead to an opportunity to move to Uganda to design, project manage and construct a number of eco-lodges in wildlife conservation areas. Ross never looked back. With the relocation came a new practice formation. Together with Campbell Drake and Ben Milbourne, Ross established Regional Associates, a collaboration spanning East Africa, Australia and the UK, and with projects as far-flung as the Seychelles. Regional Associates forged its identity in response to a shared interest in contextual design, clarified through working amidst wildly divergent local conditions. The Red Banda at Volcanoes Safaris Kyambura Lodge. Images: Tanja Milbourne. Sited on the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park in South West Uganda, the Kyambura Lodge inventively repurposes everyday objects and recycled materials to create a rich, experiential and climateappropriate architecture. The desire to camouflage the main lodge building with weathered cladding led to the creation of an exchange with the local village, where new sheeting was supplied to replace rusted roofs. In recognition of an outstanding early career, in 2010 Ross was awarded the University of Sydney s Young Alumni Achievement. Many more awards and achievements were sure to follow. Ross was a friend, adviser and motivator. I observed his brilliance firsthand when we collaborated on a design competition in His personality was a rare balance of charisma, energy and self-confidence, with selfdeprecation, calmness and a deep reserve of kindness. Quick-witted and sincere, he made friends easily, and his absence is now felt by many around the world. Ross was guided by an unusual awareness of his own abilities, and a strong sense of responsibility to put these abilities to positive effect. His work took him well beyond the normal career path and comfort zone, to a place where he was able to create immediate and lasting change. I hope that others will follow in his intrepid footprints, and that Regional Associates will continue to bring the benefits of thoughtful, joyous architecture to the people of East Africa. Ross is survived by his mother Linden and his siblings Craig, Amy, Anthony and Abi. David Neustein ARCHITECTURAL MODELMAKERS Steve Mosley Matt Scott Rob Flowers phone: sydney@modelcraft.com.au Advertise in architecture bulletin T: E: roslyn.irons@architecture.com.au Model-Tech 3D specialises in the highest quality models for presentation, marketing and DA. We utilise advanced techniques, colour and texture matching, and a computer controlled cutting system to ensure our models are clean, precise and visually exciting. To view our portfolio of completed projects or discuss your options and possibilities, please call Russell Pearse. MODEL-TECH 3D Level 6 / 2 Foveaux Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 T: F: E: russell@modeltech3d.com.au 28 Architecture Bulletin Spring 2013

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