Article: Brisbane: concrete examples of aesthetic failures

[ozbob]

From the Courier Mail click here!

Brisbane: concrete examples of aesthetic failures

Brisbane: concrete examples of aesthetic failures
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Robert MacDonald

January 13, 2010 12:00am

ONE of the great frustrations of growing up and living in Brisbane is watching the city get uglier.

Granted, we have, in the past few decades, grown from parochial cow town to "Australia's new world city", whatever that might mean. But did we have to lose so much of what made the place unique?

The midnight demolition of the once-grand Belle Vue Hotel near the Botanic Gardens 31 years ago to make way for some unmemorably ordinary government architecture set the template. Since then, the city has suffered some shocking assaults on whatever early charm it might have had. Could anyone have actually made the Roma Street Transit Centre uglier than it is?

Yes, we turned the city around to face the river, South Bank brings a sub-tropical leafiness to the city's edge, and the Gallery of Modern Art says something emphatic and stylish about modern Brisbane.

But these are the exceptions. Much of the rest of the city is infested with buildings and bits of infrastructure clearly built with little more than practicality and money in mind.

Think about the new elevated busway in front of Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital at Herston, all highly efficient and well-engineered no doubt, but its vast areas of concrete just seem to suck the light out of everything nearby.

And just when you think you've seen the nadir of ugliness, something new comes along to set a new benchmark for practical plainness.

I nominate the new overpass from the Riverside Expressway to Coronation Drive, which lets outbound motorists miss the Hale St lights.

When you travel inbound along Coronation Drive, this new bit of time-saving traffic engineering looms ahead as an appallingly clunky display of the concrete caster's art (to use the term loosely.) Again, it was no doubt built cost-efficiently and to exacting engineering standards, but really, this is one of the first bits of city infrastructure to greet visitors.

The only message it's likely to deliver to a newcomer to Brisbane is "Gee, they certainly use a lot of concrete here".

So what can we do about it?

Chris Hale, an urban economist at the University of Queensland's Centre for Transport Strategy, addressed exactly this topic in these pages recently. He made what seems to be a valid point that ugly infrastructure "is never a legitimate design, planning or engineering outcome". Presumably, no one deliberately designs things to be ugly.

Hale says ugly outcomes are a symptom of, among other things, poor leadership from politicians "who fail to encourage better design".

As he said, "no self-respecting European politician would be seen cutting the ribbon on an ugly pile of concrete".

For years our self-promoting politicians have been far more interested in looking good by cutting the ribbon than making sure whatever it is they are opening itself looks good.

Robert MacDonald is The Courier-Mail's Viewpoint editor.

[Mozz]

In terms of transportation modes more black tarmac is the way of the present and the future apparently, both above and below ground regardless of how it looks.

[Jon Bryant]

Great article!!! Time to de-engineered our city and start to build it for the people not it's cars.

[O_128]

Great article!!! Time to de-engineered our city and start to build it for the people not it's cars.

That will only happen in the BCC area if newman is voted out though the alternative Sutton is even worse

[STB]

ROFL at the mention of the Roma Street Transit Centre and it's apparant ugliness.

I slightly disagree with the idea that Brisbane is no longer a parochial cow town, it's not a cow town anymore, but it is indeed a parochial place to an extent.

[O_128]

ROFL at the mention of the Roma Street Transit Centre and it's apparant ugliness.

I slightly disagree with the idea that Brisbane is no longer a parochial cow town, it's not a cow town anymore, but it is indeed a parochial place to an extent.

The transit centre is the most horrible building is brisbane and should be knocked down stat

[#Metro]

I slightly disagree with the idea that Brisbane is no longer a parochial cow town, it's not a cow town anymore, but it is indeed a parochial place to an extent.

Parochial Cow Town?
Wait, actually maybe that is right? Except that it is the residents that are doing the moo-ing. LOL