My lovely wife also works in our industry, so being South Australian its quite likely that you know her.

If you do, you’d appreciate that I’m not necessarily driven to pursue ‘over height’.

I may not be, but most of my clients are – and why wouldn’t they seek to get the most from their development parcel? 

As Architects we generally work very hard to help our clients achieve the most effective outcome they can within the system, and if this means pursuing over height we will certainly run that through the process – the process of course, in the CBD in particular, is set up with provisions to enable support for over height approvals.

As Architects, we also have a wider accountability. We’ve spoken before about our role to support, progress and foster community, engagement, equality, opportunity, sustainability, and all the multitude of good that comes from a positive built environment.

So as an Architect, I ponder why it is that we would have height restrictions in the first place?

….. I can see you all pointing to the sky at those giant jet fuelled metal birds that so often skim past the north of Adelaide to land at the airport, and so we’ll acknowledge the airport limitations.

But these aviation restrictions aside, I contemplate that we have height restrictions for a range of reasons:

• To limit/manage development opportunity/ economic growth through policy
• To guide the urban form and hierarchy
• To manage context which may include the need for adjacent solar access, or heritage interface etc
• To effect a lower rise community
• To reflect a commitment made to the local community

I’m sure I could come up with many others, as I imagine you have already.

But I ask you… in all of the possible reasons at the tip of your tongue, are they fundamentally focussed on managing the height itself? Because the height itself is what generates the scale, and casts the shadow, and creates the urban form.

…. I bet they are.

So I wonder, why does adding some plants on the wall and the roof (or indeed any other more sophisticated contributions) mean you can exceed the height? 

I don’t think it does. 

I think a height limit is actually about the height. We have large areas of the Adelaide CBD that have unlimited height in the planning policy, so if we put a limit on it somewhere else, there must have been a reason.

We so often talk about the importance of certainty in development opportunities to foster economic growth, yet a maybe or maybe not height policy seems to run at odds.

I say keep the rules simple and equitable and stick to them.

There is always room for the one in a thousand special case or the unique scenario were the policy doesn’t quite work, but for the vast majority we should be clear that 43 actually means 43.

I’m going to put it to the authorities that its positive to manage urban form and height for good reasons. I’m going to add that if they are good reasons, then they don’t go away as a result of bolt on design features.

Must go now. I’m off to look at a Tesla – I imagine they are allowed to go faster than the normal speed limit.