Thoughts from a traveller

I’ve just returned to Sydney from three weeks away in Paris and London. It’s wonderful to visit these great cities and remind yourself how they are made. I found the joy of walking the streets of Paris tempered by the frustration of knowing that in Sydney our decision-makers keep trying to un-learn the lessons of our past, and un-learn the knowledge of how to make a great city. It’s a frustration enhanced by the knowledge that Sydney still has the potential to be a great city that truly reflect its stunning natural landscape.

It seems the “shock of the new” demands an attempt at a new way, which somehow means you throw out the rule book and hope the “Instagram” or “technology” will solve the inherent problems, yet tellingly they always seem to fail. Thankfully cities are dynamic places that are in constant re-making. But the wastefulness of building badly and then replacing one mistake with another one 25 years later is not the way to make a great city – but it’s a pattern we keep repeating.

It is also frighteningly true, as Amanda Burden [past director of the NYC Department of Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission that commissioned the Highline] says, that you have to constantly fight for public space and domain. I guess this is our role as guardians of the city: to fight for Sydney’s public spaces. It’s a great role for the Institute to embrace through advocacy.

I wrote some notes whilst in Paris on what makes a good city…..these are largely what good architects know, what you as members know, what people like Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill advocate so graphically in their book Public Sydney:

• Start with ambition
• Great cities take time to make
• Great cities are designed around great public buildings, great public domain & great public transport
• Sub-divide into fine & varying grain
• Design with many skilled authors
• Buildings and public domain are made with:
  • high quality materials and
  • fine details
• Buildings respect the street and public domain
• Cars work around cities, not cities around the car

And above all, great cities are places for social and cultural celebration and growth. They are not solely profit centres.

Sydney Architecture Festival

Congratulations to members, Chapter staff, volunteers and everyone else involved in the events of the past weekend. The Festival is now in its ninth year and is a firm fixture on the city’s event calendar.

The new format of a four day Festival condensed the 10 day program of previous years into an action-packed long weekend of talks, events, tours, competitions and activities.

The flagship public event for the festival was #TheGoods, the first major public event held at the Ultimo Goods Line, one of the most exciting recent urban regeneration projects in the city. The full-day event included yoga, tai chi, talks, symposiums, a zine fair and a night-time short film festival. The Meet an Architect segment seemed to be particularly popular.

Country Conference / Chapter Council on the road

The Country Division conference in Bathurst last month gave us the opportunity to extend the Chapter Council meeting ‘on the road’ into the regions for the first time. I thank Andrew Nimmo, Sarah Aldridge and other councillors for making this such a successful event in my absence overseas.

I’ve been particularly impressed by the quality and innovation evident in the Country Division Awards this year – everything from a café on the outskirts of Mudgee using containers as building blocks to the re-imagining of a tired shopping mall in Ballina, and lots of other interesting and successful projects in between. Congratulations to our country members for such an impressive and varied line-up of their work.

Greater Sydney Commission

We welcomed the announcement of this body last year and now there’s a definite shape to it: the Secretaries of Planning & Environment, Transport and Treasury, six district commissioners, an independent chair, an environment commissioner, an economic commissioner and a social commissioner plus four committees and two observers. So far so good – but design is nowhere to be seen. We will be lobbying hard to make sure design excellence is an important part of the Commission’s work.

Shaun Carter
NSW President