Hotel moved from habour in new Barangaroo vision
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 19, 2011
ALMOST 60 independent architects and planners have united to back an alternative scheme for Barangaroo, which would have smaller towers, remove the hotel from the harbour and jettison the "naturalistic" headland championed by Paul Keating.Five weeks before the state election, the group has called for a public inquiry and released its alternative scheme in an attempt to influence a new government to tackle what it sees as major problems with the approved design."This shows that there is not a broad church of support within the urban planning and architect community for the direction Barangaroo has taken since the successful design competition," said Scott Woodcock of the National Trust, which also backs the alternative scheme.But the developer, Lend Lease, and the state government, which owns the site, insisted the plan would provide a spectacular new waterfront precinct for Sydney.Veteran architects Philip Cox, David Chesterman and Peter Webber are spearheading the group of 57, which includes the president of the Planning Institute of Australia, a former government architect and two former heads of the Planning Department."We recognise that the developer and the design team are excellent, but the current design is a huge problem: it's completely out of scale with its surroundings and the hotel is an extraordinary, unprecedented intrusion into the waterways," Mr Chesterman said.The group, Architects and Planners Concerned About Barangaroo, oppose what they say has been a "deeply flawed process" for the $6 billion urban renewal project and say their scheme, named "A Better Barangaroo", is one solution to problems with the design.They say the plan would provide the same financial return to the government and the developer despite reducing commercial floor space by about 10 per cent. It would do so by abandoning the vision of a "naturalistic" headland park and retaining the sea wall, saving between $100 million and $200 million, they estimated.By moving the planned harbour hotel on to land, it would no longer overshadow the waterfront at lunchtime, they said.They say their plan would create more public space, but Lend Lease disputes this.It would retain the cruise ship terminal at Barangaroo, which they said would operate like the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay.A spokeswoman for the government's Barangaroo Delivery Authority said quarantine and customs setbacks required for a terminal would restrict public access to the waterfront if it was built at Barangaroo.David Hutton of Lend Lease denied that savings would be realised by ditching the headland, as the plan to build it using fill excavated at the south of the site would offset costs.He defended the height and scale of the office towers, saying they would provide a dramatic "vertical edge" to the site's south end, echoing the city's northern edge at Circular Quay. He also said aligning the facades of the commercial towers to the west, as in the alternative scheme, would contradict sustainability best practice due to heat impacts and that Lend Lease's tower alignment permitted views to the harbour from buildings behind.Lend Lease's latest concept has planning approval and work began late last year. The designs of individual buildings are subject to a further stage of the planning process.A coalition of organisations led by Jack Mundey, which is suing the government over concerns about contamination from the site leaching into the harbour, also backed the alternative proposal.A city of Sydney councillor, John McInerney, who is involved in the coalition and the group of 57, said the onus was on the Coalition, likely to be elected to government in March, to hold a public inquiry into how the approved design had moved so far from the original concept plan.THE ALTERNATIVE‚„S ARCHITECTSPhillip Cox, ArchitectEmeritus Professor Peter Webber, former NSW Planning commissioner and NSW government architectDavid Chesterman, Architect, urban designer for King Street Wharf and Pyrmont BayRichard Smyth, Town planner and former director-general of Planning NSWJohn McInerney, Architect and City of Sydney councillor Kerry Clare, City of Sydney design advisory panel and Sydney Opera House eminent architects panelProfessor Rob Adams, Director of Design, City of Melbourne Russell Olsson, Architect, urban designerPhillip Thalis, Architect, winner of original Barangaroo design competitionFull list at smh.com.au
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
