The Mayor of Sydney has slated the designs for St Vincent’s new cancer centre as “inconsistent”, “gross” and environmentally unsustainable.
The concept plans, prepared by Urbis and BVN Architecture, include an 11-storey cancer centre and a nine-storey virology facility that will “grossly tower over the surrounding local area”, Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP claims.
However, Ian Cady, the Urbis statutory planner who prepared the concept plan document, told Architecture & Design that the project is of “comparable height” to other close buildings.
“The local area has a combination of low buildings, two storey old heritage buildings and also a series of quite tall buildings and we’re relating to that taller scale building. Obviously some people think we should be relating to the smaller scale buildings,” Cady said.
In her submission to NSW planning minister Kristina Keneally, Moore also claims that the plans fail to meet current benchmarks in environmental performance, energy and water conservation and greenhouse gas reduction set by sustainable public buildings, such as the Surry Hills Library and Community Centre.
The plans are also “inconsistent” with a 2005 masterplan presented to the local community, Moore argues.
“I share residents’ anger that these commitments which had broad community support have been disregarded,” she said.
However, Cady argues that the current submission bears no relationship to the 2005 concept.
“There was a plan put forward [in 2005] but the current submission is for a different proposal. That was a masterplan that wasn’t proceeded with. It was not actually a control document … there’s no relationship between them,” he said.
Urbis developed the concept envelopes for both the cancer centre and virology centre. BVN Architecture was engaged to design the building for the cancer centre site. A design has not been put forward for the virology centre site yet.
