RAIA NSW president Graham Jahn commended the Premier’s stance, although he is designing buildings for the most-criticised developer, Meriton, and suggested that bad apartment buildings were designed by non-architects. The Council of Social Service of NSW called for more affordable housing and noted that increasing quality would increase prices >> Melburnian Shelley Penn has been confirmed as the GA’s new design director, a one-year contract following Kerry and Lindsay Clare after their two years. Penn’s role is to set up internet-based kits-of-parts strategies for efficient building procurement >> Athletes are complaining about wind fluctuations at Bligh Lobb’s Stadium Australia at Homebush >> The Olympic Co-ordination Authority launched its artworks program (led by Bridget Smyth) with a bus tour of the installations. Many exploit the ephemeral qualities of water >> In response to eleventh-hour complaints that the Olympics have no structures celebrating indigenous culture, the Metropolian Land Council has commissioned the Merrima unit of DPWS and Innovarchi to design a cultural centre on land near the Newington Forest. However, there’s no chance the building will be ready for the Games in September >> Paul Berkemeier has won the ‘emerging architects’ competition to design the Australian Shearers Hall of Fame at Hay >> Renzo Piano is worried about whether his Aurora Place twin towers, nearing completion after serious budget cuts, will ‘sing’. Meanwhile, there’s much debate at the Sydney City Council about whether to approve an expressive red steel ‘knot’ sculpture by American artist Mark di Suvero, which would straddle the Macquarie Street intersection outside the Aurora Place apartment building. Di Suvero is represented in Australia by art dealer Barbara Flynn, who appears to have obtained funding from the developers, Lend Lease >> Speakers at this year’s Interior Designex (May 18-21 at Darling Harbour) include Mexico’s Enrique Norten and Melbourne’s Wood Marsh >> Discussion is developing about the future of the massive strip of wharves at Millers Point, leased to Patrick’s Stevedoring until 2006
NORTHERN TERRITORY
Developers Robert Whyte (Sydney) and Bill Wyllie (Perth) have bought the BP site at Dinah Beach Road, with plans to build up to 700 housing units
QUEENSLAND
The MacArthur Chambers site, on Queen Elizabeth and Edward Streets, is again being targeted for Brisbane’s tallest office tower >> Arts Queensland has selected six designer-artists – Marc Harrison, Ian Garradd, Luis Nheu, Jim McKee, Bruce Carrick and Kylie Bickle – to link with product manufacturers >> Brisbane’s new music scene includes bands named Arkitectonic (who feature Donovan Hill on their CD cover) and Topology >> The Lord Mayor’s Committee of Brisbane is seeking 45-year visions for the city. John Mainwaring predicts tree canopies along Queen and Albert Streets but not many skyscrapers >> HOK Lobb are planning the new, parking-free stadium at Lang Park >> MPS Architects have produced, with a Brisbane research group and advertising agency, a ‘matrix’ of preferences for new houses by people of four different generations >> Michael Rayner is the RAIA’s new Queensland president
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Adelaide City Council planners are testing form Z software to 3D-model the basics of controversial projects >> David Jones is selling its Adelaide Central Plaza property, as part of a plan to lease rather than own its buildings and invest the rest in new stores >> Plans to convert Adelaide’s Treasury Building into an Intercontinental hotel have been postponed because the operators dropped out >> An illuminated monument to migrants, including an information centre and designed by Hectorville architect Rep Giordano, will be built in Campbelltown >> Eight architecture and landscape offices are shortlisted to replan North Terrace – Woodhead, Hassell,Taylor and Cullity,Tract, Ashton Raggatt McDougall, Oculus, Chris Dance Land Design and Peddle Thorp | | TASMANIA
Premier Jim Bacon is unsympathetic to calls by leading local citizens, including architect Garry Forward, to compete with Geelong for a deal to build a Bilbao-style Guggenheim Museum. He says he’s not interested in projects that are too big and ‘unTasmanian’ – and members of existing arts bodies agree with him. John Lees, chair of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board, says the current government has already increased funding of the arts by 75%. Meanwhile, Forward has negotiated to bring the director general of the Revitalisation of Metropolitan Bilbao Association, Alfonso Martinez Cearra,to speak at the International Cities and Towns conference in Hobart this September >> Hobart fans of Art Deco architecture and design, including architect Jamieson Allom, are planning to launch a state branch of the Society Art Deco >> Archaeologists Anne McConnell and Robert Vincent have decried losses of significant fragments from the Grand Chancellor site and the state’s lack of clear guidelines for dealing with sensitive development sites >> One of Hobart’s oldest landmarks, the 1847 Hutchins School Building in Macquarie Street, has been converted into a private hotel by Reinmuth Blythe Balmforth >> Architect Ken Latona has built the 20-bed Bay of Fires Lodge eco-tourism facility on a privately owned bush ridge beside Mount William National Park. His resort is supported by Conservation Trust director Michael Lynch but opposed by Greens senator Bob Brown >> In a separate issue, Senator Brown has called for Launceston’s Customs House to remain in public control. He is concerned that the federal government plans to sell it “at a bargain basement price” only a short while after taxpayers funded extensive restoration work
VICTORIA
Memories of the Sydney Opera House debacle are being revived for Melbourne’s Federation Square, after the Bracks government announced it was taking advice from a former Labor Planning Minister, Professor Evan Walker, to abandon the 2500 sq m western shard because it will block views of the St Paul’s Cathedral facade to drivers on the Princes Bridge (while framing views from the plaza within the complex). This will delay the project, force revision of the visitor centre (needing expansion into other buildings), produce an exceptionally expansive public plaza and lose tenancy revenues. Most architects are supporting Lab, including the former ‘sore-loser’ of the Fed Square competition, Howard Raggatt of Ashton Raggatt McDougall. The Melbourne City Council also voted 7-2 to retain the shard but Lord Mayor Peter Costigan was one of the two councillors opposing >> Lab’s shards-yes campaign caused directors Peter Davidson and Don Bates to postpone their January Process workshop to plan visions for Melbourne >> The new Colonial Stadium at Docklands, designed by Daryl Jackson, has opened to a critique in The Age by Norman Day that it is not colourful enough for Australia and blocks the city’s connection to the water. (Surprisingly, Day’s report did not name the architect.) Across town, Peddle Thorp’s highly popular Aquarium has also received a serve from Day and Sunday Age critic Joe Rollo: triggering a letter to the editor from PT’s design director, Peter Brooks, about their irrational and biased reporting >> Docklands projects are ‘churning’ amid talk of key staff changes at the development authority. Mirvac dropped about 20 architects from its Yarra Edge project because of building union demands for a 36-hour week and a 24% pay rise. Although it advertised for new architects several weeks later, it also told off-the-plan buyers that it would hold their deposits for up to three and a half years, to allow it to fight the unions. New tenders have been called for Victoria Harbour and the Studio City fun park development is still not financed. But MabCorp says it could take up part of the Studio City site and the Grollo family are still pursuing Melbourne Tower. Queensland’s Sunland Group is now talking about a Versace-on-the-Yarra hotel like one they’re building on the Gold Coast >> |
