Sydney's integrated planning crisis, an "aesthetic disaster" in the UK and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts "as dull as ditchwater".
"Sydney will have a population of 10 million. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The only way to make this city liveable is to transform the way we do basic planning and infrastructure. There has been a complete lack of integrated planning in this city. We need a single body, getting independent advice to develop an overarching plan"
Sydney Morning Herald
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"I would have no problem with an innovative, bold and modern building going in there, but in my opinion this was not one of them. It is neither ambitious nor a good pastiche of the past. It is an aesthetic disaster. In my opinion it looks like a failed 1970s building. The building that is there is better than the current design."
Evening Times
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"But ever since the main tenants ... moved to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which ironically is as dull as ditchwater, the Sony has sat largely empty. To make matters worse, it has the misfortune to be owned by the city, which doesn't have a clue. To municipal politicians and bureaucrats, it is nothing more than an expense we can't afford. So when developers came along with the ill-conceived scheme of constructing a condo literally on top of the property, city council leapt at the opportunity. Will blunders never cease?"
The Star
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"Neither this architectural gesture, nor the huge glass podium pressing toward the street, lift this building above the very ordinary. And whatever its designers and engineers decide to do at the summit - it probably won't help to relieve the overall tedium of the project. The tower is a grey, shiny slab that could have been put up in the dull 1970s."
The Globe and Mail
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"This may be the age of sustainability, but it is also the age when more and more buildings are disappearing in a puff of pulverised bricks and mortar. Once upon a time, architects could be confident their scheme would survive happily ever after. But now the chances are, most will live to see many of their grand schemes reduced to rubble, in a phenomenon akin to increasingly fat kids predeceasing their parents."
Architects’ Journal
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