Great design held back by consultation, the "ridiculous turfing" of the Harbour Bridge and American architecture prioritises innovation over beauty.
"The problem is not that too much consultation inhibits great design, but that too much consultation today is a box-ticking exercise, carried out in name alone. Worse, some is verging on the actively corrupt. Among the most hair-raising examples I've come across was the use of actors to pack a council meeting and the forging of letters supporting a scheme by residents who did not exist."
BD Online
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"And that's not to even mention the ridiculous turfing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday, which caused traffic pile-ups of two to three hours of delay on the north shore. This was one of Nathan Rees' most memorable achievements: to close down one of Australia's busiest routes at huge expense to the taxpayer. To lay tens of thousands of metres of kikuyu grass so a few people could have a picnic (with no view) in the middle of the bridge rather than at any number of beautiful natural parklands around Sydney."
Sydney Morning Herald
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"The death of beauty in America over a couple of decades was in historical terms almost instantaneous. A revival could be just as swift if architects would re-examine outmoded and wrongheaded thinking that puts innovation ahead of beauty as the primary aesthetic purpose of architecture."
Projo
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"Some of Australia's recent 'high architecture' takes itself very seriously. Rectilinear, somewhat rigid, lacking colour and movement - one is surprised that almost classical approaches to planning, language and structure remain dominant in the face of emergent computer/digital technologies. Where are the new-age buildings that are clearly available to the 21st century?"
Sydney Morning Herald
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"Contemporary public space is characterised by DDA compliancy, environmental cosmetics and, when none of that serves to create a place that anyone identifies with, we build a huge piece of public art in the hope that it will endow the neutral ground with meaning. There are lots of excuses for this, but my argument is that in masterplanning, landscaping and commissioning terms we have little or no depth of thinking, and almost no idea of what a meaningful public space is in our contemporary world."
The Architects' Journal
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