Urban areas are dramatically increasing worldwide as rural populations decline. Our cities are no different, with energy intensive growth exacerbating sustainability.

The country’s, or rather the planet’s, demand for better, more sustainable, urban design has never been greater.

The three design professions at the forefront of this increasingly complex area are Architects, Planners, and Engineers, APEs in shorthand. Could good urban design end the fossil-fueled haphazard development that has riven our cities, and save the planet from climate change? Can we ascend to the planet of the APEs?

Short answer is No. The APE professions are disregarded from without (this week’s topic) and in disarray within (for next week).

The key issue is that the APE professions have very low status in Australia. Unlike Europe or Scandinavia, where they are held in high regard by the general public, and politicians in particular, here they are derided, even despised. One trivial issue can illustrate: Switzerland has Le Corbusier on a banknote; Finland has Alvar Aalto on one; but we no longer have Francis Greenway, a convicted forger, on our $10 note.

More seriously, the failure of architectural competitions can illustrate how good urban design has been sidelined. The APE professions may be called upon, but the designs are not followed or developed.

Canberra has little of the brilliant design of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony, whose geomancy of axes arranged buildings to the propitious north-east (for better passive design) and included public transport easements. It could have been Australia’s most sustainable city, despite its colder climate.

But it became the least sustainable. Post WW2, as Canberra rapidly expanded, the politicians, egged on by bureaucrats, supplanted the compact layout with the ‘Y-plan’ by Lord Holford, of the UK ‘New Towns’ movement. Its inanity promoted low density suburbia full of curved roads and roundabouts, creating the nation’s highest demand for cars to reach individual, poor climate-designed houses.

Canberra’s NCDC (National Capital Development Commission- aka No Can Do Club) bureaucrats continued the design frustration. The Archives, a major building in the Parliamentary Triangle, was appallingly bungled.

The two-stage competition was won by Francis Martin, an Australian working in Canada. He returned, only to find the NCDC moved the site, changed the conditions, commissioned another architect, and sent him on a six-year purgatory to get recognition and payment. The long debacle ensured that no building every eventuated.

This resulted in an example of the ‘edifice complex’: if you have a building, you are visible and can attract funding. If you don’t, you die. This explains the $500m waste on the demolition of an award-winning hall and its replacement with a needless down-market museum at the Australian War Memorial. All whilst the invisible Archives goes begging for funds just to do its essential work.

The disaster of the intervention by right wing politician Davis Hughes in pushing Joern Utzon aside at the Sydney Opera House needs no further ventilation. But the parallels at Barangaroo, the latest urban fiasco, are remarkable. A carefully crafted urban plan by Philip Thalis, Paul Berkemeier and Jane Irwin wins the competition. It understands and extends Sydney’s typology, with sustainable, diverse and democratic ideas.

None of which is good enough for Paul Keating who upends the plan to create a poor version of the Rockefeller Centre at one end and a ‘Disney-style’ harbour and hill at the other. As the over-development becomes apparent and the disappointment mounts Keating reacts to criticisms with crude ‘argumentum ad hominem’, moreover ‘contumelia ad hominem’. It’s beneath him, but truly shows the low regard senior figures have for the design professions in Australia.

What about Planning then? I’d argue it’s the least regarded profession in Australia, typified by its hollowing out by local councils. Strategic planning is complex, time consuming and demands a wide view and remit. The plethora of many small councils has the effect of ‘divide and rule’ in our cities, leading to poor holistic planning and communication.

Strategic plans are vetted by politicians of the ‘butcher, baker and candlestick maker’ variety, who have little understanding of the complexities of demography, geography and social sciences, let alone the physical aspects of urban design.

Most strategic planners uphold deep sustainable values, so why are there such manifest failures in the design of Australian cities? I put it down to a lack of regard for the planning profession, and a lack of political will to support difficult decisions.

And Engineers? Returning to the Sydney Opera House, how many would know that the principal structural engineer, Peter Rice, also engineered the Pompidou Center in Paris and Lloyd’s in London? So little recognition for the great engineering feats in Australia. Not only do we have one of the great buildings of the 20th century, but it was also engineered by one of the greatest engineers.

More recently engineers have become the ‘risk police’ rather than creatives. The building and design codes have become increasingly more demanding and less flexible. They require engineers to be the upholders of safety in all aspects, cracking down on innovation and creativity to ensure a minimisation of risk. There is palpable frustration in the engineering consultancies of all types.

The ‘ne plus ultra’ is the requirement in NSW for ‘facade engineering’ in class 2 buildings, meaning a two-storey brick cavity apartment building needs a ten-page report on weatherproofing for the most traditional of building methods, which some say we invented, and if not, at least perfected. So much for affordability and forget putting insulation into that cavity for sustainability!

In summary

Our system for good city design is broken, and until we can have expert strategic planners making citywide plans for the future of our cities, we will continue to have piecemeal, uncoordinated, and inefficient planning in our cities. Sustainability is only increased holistically.

If there are clearer strategic plans then architects will be more able to be designers to the triple bottom line, rather creative external decorators. And that greater responsibility must be rewarded with competition winners and design excellence being enshrined not eviscerated. Sustainable possibilities will be increased, not diminished.

We must reverse the onus of proof in building, demanding that builders take responsibility (with clear ground rules and consequences), and releasing engineers from their role as ‘design police’.

In short, we require a complete rethink of how APEs can help save the planet.

Tone Wheeler is an architect / the views expressed are his / contact at toneontuesday@gmail.com. He is also the proud recipient of the 2014 AIA NSW Milo Dunphy Award.

Tone Wheeler

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