The Australian Institute of Architects Queensland Chapter has lodged an application to heritage list the Queensland Cultural Precinct by the late architect Robin Gibson.
A draft master plan of Brisbane’s cultural precinct released in April 2014 could potentially allow the low-rise riverfront precinct to be dwarfed by thirty-storey hotels and commercial towers.
The Institute believes the proposed developments are at odds with the principles of Gibson’s original design brief for “low-profile architecture, respecting the encompassing hills of greater Brisbane.”
Queensland’s Cultural Precinct by the late Robin Gibson.
Image: Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Queensland’s Cultural Precinct includes the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Museum and the original State Library. The buildings represent a form of tropically-inflected brutalist architecture that is rare to both Brisbane and Australia. The Queensland Art Gallery received Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Architecture in 1982 and QPAC received the 25 Year Enduring Architecture Award in 2010.
Few modern buildings in Queensland have been added to the heritage register – the most recent was in 2004 with the Sir William Glasgow memorial in Queen Street built 1968. The Queensland Heritage Council is expected to deliver their final decision in mid-2015.
