Blueprint

Late last year it was announced that Lend Lease had been awarded development rights at Barangaroo, a massive harbourside project on the western flank of Sydney’s CBD. The proposal concentrates the built area to the south of the site leaving the north of the site to parkland. For additional bling, a Richard Rogers designed hotel building with red steel exo skeleton extends into the harbour.

The image above is not that scheme. It is the same site, but by MVRDV nine years ago. More on this later. But first a little background on this project. In 2006 there was a public, open two-stage competition for the site. A shortlist of five practices went into a second stage from which the team of Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects with Paul Berkemeir Architects and Jane Irwin Landscape Architects were selected as the winning entry. Up against the likes of Morphosis and Richard Rogers, their proposal succeeded partly due to its focus on sound urban principles and a generous split between park and built area as opposed to an identifiable architectural statement.

However for these same reasons it was also a masterplan that was easily exploitable—sensible planning is not an issue that the public will take up arms for—and in the years following the competition, commercial tweaking required larger buildings and the scheme was adapted to suit. To a point. Eventually, the design team was sidelined , a new closed competition was held a new tender for development rights was held, ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating spoke out in favour of returning the headland back to some supposedly pristine pre-colonial time and got his way. All of which took place without much of a fuss, save a few articles in the local paper. (If you would like it, further reading may be found at Hill Thalis‘ website and there is a good rundown of the evolution of the site at Butterpaper.)

And so we have this proposal by Lend Lease and Rogers.

The image above is not that scheme. It is the unsuccessful second stage competition entry by Lend Lease and Richard Rogers, four years ago. Add a few thousand square metres and squint a bit, and you have the current scheme. Red Exo skeleton towers? Check. Low rise buildings along Hickson Road? Check. A detached headland park? Check:

In a radio interview, Phillip Thallis of the original competition winning team makes some good points about the new scheme. A subtle change—at least one not likely to be noticed by the public at large—is the removal of the street between the developable area and the parkland from the masterplan. As Thalis notes, streets act to keep development in check and without them, the line between public and private becomes blurred, often in favour of commercial interests. Speaking in defence of this approach, Chris Johnson describes it as being a “sensitive, poetic” solution. That is all well and good, but the so called ‘feathered edge’ between parks and development area is a characteristic more at home at a retirement village golf course than it is in a city.

Thallis also notes that the design and commercial details of the other entries had not yet been disclosed, something that Sydney-siders ought to be concerned about given the significant chunk of the city this project comprises.

So.

Now for the point of this post. Which concerns a curiosity that as far as I am aware, has not been a part of the discussion of the site.

In 2000, Deputy Chair of the Barangaroo Delivery Authority’s Design Review Panel Chris Johnson, while he was NSW Government Architect co-authored “Port Cities: Rotterdam Sydney” with Winy Maas of MVRDV. The spiral bound study was not formally published (it has no ISBN or publisher information within), does not appear on MVRDV’s publication page, and a web search returns only one entry—a listing in the Bauhaus Dessau library—so widespread knowledge of this document seems unlikely.

I picked up my copy at the 2000 RAIA National Conference in Sydney where Winy Maas was the keynote speaker, and it seems it was produced as a project to coincide with his time in Australia.

The study comprises of:

• A comparative analysis of Rotterdam and Sydney using the familiar mapping of waterways, infrastructure, density, industry, and so on.
• A study of the makeup of the generic port city.
• ‘Port City Rotterdam’ by MVRDV: A detailed graphic analysis of Rotterdam’s port related activity. With pie charts.
• ‘Port City Sydney’ by GADD: A patternbook of approaches to building on the harbour which seems ignorant of any pre-existing urban condition in Sydney. Without pie charts.
• ‘Sydney Harbour Projects: The Activated Landscape’ by MVRDV: A series of speculative proposals for Sydney Harbour’s port, commercial and leisure activities.

Above, “Ridge Development” by GADD. In which the city of Sydney is seen as though it were virgin landscape waiting for sub-Murcutt skillions to inhabit it.

It is the last section, ‘Sydney Harbour Projects: The Activated Landscape’, which is of particular interest given the recent announcements regarding the western edge of the CBD. While this section of the book is authored by MVRDV, the entire book is presented as being co-edited by Maas and Johnson, so it stands to reason that Chris Johnson too was engaged in discussions around the assertions presented within.

Three opportunities are presented for Sydney to make use of its harbour activities; Concentration, Islands, and Bridges. In each case a typology is presented as super infrastructure containing a dense mix of program skewed toward the hyper industrial. The representation is rudimentary and feels somewhat rushed, which it may well have been, but the idea is clearly articulated—a dense consolidation of mixed use types utilising opportunities presented by a harbour-front city.

Inhabited Bridges

Stacked Islands

Concentration

The least spectacular, but most familiar, concentrates activity on the blank stretch of East Darling Harbour, now known as Barangaroo. A bunch of evenly dispersed towers occupy the site, interspersed with port infrastructure raised over the water on steel trusses. And it may be long a bow to draw, but it does appear that Rogers’ hotel tower shares some common with MVRDV’s earlier vision.

The crucial difference, of course, between these proposals and those currently on the table is the emphasis on the dense mix of program, commercial residential, and the singling out of industrial infrastructure. In reference to the promotion of the new economies of leisure and international business and the relegation of older economies of port infrastructure and industry to the city fringe, MVRDV asks:

“Does this ‘push in’ and ‘push out’ of new and old economies lead to even more mono-functional urban zones? Does the city run the risk of becoming too dependant on new economies? Would it not be economically wiser and in urban terms more attractive for the city to house the largest amount of different activities? Would this not contribute to towards Sydney’s metropolitan aspirations of being a truly diverse global city?”

Or to quote Fugazi: “What a difference a little difference would make”

In the intervening years, the notion of Sydney Harbour as a port for industry has been played out, with port activity making way to banking headquarters to occupy the edges of the water. Perhaps climate change will put the absurdity of delivering freight to the periphery of the city and trucking back it to the centre by road back on the agenda, but for now it seems unlikely that freight will increase in the harbour.

Beyond the insertion of the stacked freight port, MVRDV’s ‘Concentration’ proposal offers little more than a densification of the city edge, with the randomly placed towers not presenting a terribly compelling urban situation. The two other proposals—bridges and islands—however unlikely, do offer more, prompting discussion of how this under-utilised harbour may be treated as urban infrastructure rather than merely the backdrop for corner suites.