# SYDNEY l BARANGAROO



## Sky_Is_The_Limit (Feb 4, 2009)

Barangaroo is a former dockside wharf precinct located on the western fringe of the Sydney CBD. It is the final frontier in the gentrification of the Sydney CBD's waterfront, and at 22 hectares it provides significant space for the expansion of the CBD. It will include (amongst other things);

- Over 500 000 sq m of Gross Floor Area
- Several major office towers (including two at 197m)
- Several residential towers (including three over 100m)
- A 30 000 sq m shopping precinct
- A new cultural centre (tenatively named 'The Openhouse')
- An 11 hectare headland park (complete with the 'naturification' on the artifical shoreline, complete with coves and canals) 
- A new public auditorium in the headland park
- Australia's tallest hotel (213m) jutting out into the harbour. It will be built on top of a public pier, which will house a library/museum at the bottom
- Numerous bars, cafes and restaurants along the promenade
- A 'second Circular Quay' with six wharves for a major ferry hub
- A light rail link to Circular Quay and Chinatown via Sussex Street and Hickson Road

In November 2009, the Lord Richard Rogers led Lend Lease proposal was named the winner of the international design competition. Some of the renders and plans of this proposal are shown below...

Posted by CULWULLA in the SSC Aus Forums












WHAT DO YOU THINK?
There is much debate in the Aus forums, so I'd like to gauge an international opinion


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## Sky_Is_The_Limit (Feb 4, 2009)

And some quick screen grabs from the news...

POSTED BY CULWALLA IN THE AUS FORUMS


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## Sky_Is_The_Limit (Feb 4, 2009)

And a few more :banana:



^^
Part of the Headland Park, looking back over 'Big Red' (the hotel) and the office towers



^^

The public pier at the base of the hotel with the esplanade at the southern end of the site

Both from THE AGE NEWSPAPER


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## Yardmaster (Jun 1, 2004)

Another Sydney landmark.


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## Avatar (Sep 11, 2002)

Sydney doing what it does best ... nothing. 

Banal, mediocre and plain ugly.


The renderings started looking semi ok but have been getting progressively worse. Richard Rogers landmark tower is horrendous in later renders.
Other plans were better and should have been included in the development.


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## Fabian (Sep 11, 2002)

It is as good as it is going to get. The best feature of the entire project has to be the parkland which will take up half the site along with the public walkway along the waterfront. Also the fact that canals will run the buildings bring the harbour closer to the people but also to break up the shoreline.

This project will improve access to the harbour and is more people friendly than other sections of the city centre. It will be a hive of activity at all hours. 

Also I like Richard Rodgers design for the tower. The fact it resembles the mast of a tall ship reflects the location that it is - Sydney Harbour and provides a link to it's past as it was once docklands.


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## Fabian (Sep 11, 2002)

This is what it looked like as a shipping terminal just three years ago



















And one year later hosted this man and his circus...


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## slenderbeam (Feb 23, 2010)

*mediocrity*



Fabian said:


> It is as good as it is going to get. The best feature of the entire project has to be the parkland which will take up half the site along with the public walkway along the waterfront. Also the fact that canals will run the buildings bring the harbour closer to the people but also to break up the shoreline.
> 
> This project will improve access to the harbour and is more people friendly than other sections of the city centre. It will be a hive of activity at all hours.
> 
> Also I like Richard Rodgers design for the tower. The fact it resembles the mast of a tall ship reflects the location that it is - Sydney Harbour and provides a link to it's past as it was once docklands.


I'm amazed at how so many opinions in these forums are along the lines of 

"it's good enough - let's build". 

This is an absurd way to approach one of the best pieces of waterfront in the CBD. It is the same approach the government is taking and it is appalling.

This masterplan has no zing. As Avatar said - banal, bland. We need to do something better here. As it stands this is a quick boring money grab.

How mediocre we have become since the days of the opera house and harbour bridge.


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## Fabian (Sep 11, 2002)

Doesn't look bland to me at all - if it were, the park would simply be a flat patch of grass and we would have box style towers.


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## Looking/Up (Feb 28, 2008)

The esplanade and the parkland is beautiful, but that tower that juts out into the water is _terrible_.


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## Brizer (Nov 26, 2003)

Slenderbeam, what makes you think the Opera House was greeted with glad cries and popular enthusiasm? If you research the newspapers of the day you'll find it was opposed, vilified and reviled, to put it nicely. Newspapers mounted anti-Opera House campaigns just like the Sydney Morning Herald is doing today with the Barangaroo project. All the same anti arguments were used to try to stop it right up until October 1973 when the complex was opened by _The Quinn _and suddenly it became "Our Opera House". 
Most anti-Barangaroo project criticism is negative and unconstructive. There is a lot of frothing fury and furious railing against it. The only alternatives suggested so far have ranged from the totally out of scale to the just plain loopy. Alternate philosophical agendas also underpin certain arguments which will truck no design that isn't wholly in accord with their beliefs. No constructive, viable suggestions have yet been presented; the original scheme by Thalis, now, that is bland and unimaginative.
The current proposal isn't perfect - people will never agree on what is! - but it's a bloody sight better than the alternatives so far proposed officially or unofficially. I just hope that the architect & developer are encouraged to be a bit more imaginative in the refinement of the design, but 'pray' that it won't be dumbed down by nitpicking detail, dumb regulations and carping negative criticism.


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## Dilaz89 (Nov 13, 2002)

If PJK was not steering this project, it wouldn't have a chance in helll!

Thank your lucky stars, Sydney!

As for me, I like it. If it were up to me, it'd be more ambitious with a 300m tower instead.


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## slenderbeam (Feb 23, 2010)

Brizer said:


> Slenderbeam, what makes you think the Opera House was greeted with glad cries and popular enthusiasm? If you research the newspapers of the day you'll find it was opposed, vilified and reviled, to put it nicely. Newspapers mounted anti-Opera House campaigns just like the Sydney Morning Herald is doing today with the Barangaroo project. All the same anti arguments were used to try to stop it right up until October 1973 when the complex was opened by _The Quinn _and suddenly it became "Our Opera House".
> Most anti-Barangaroo project criticism is negative and unconstructive. There is a lot of frothing fury and furious railing against it. The only alternatives suggested so far have ranged from the totally out of scale to the just plain loopy. Alternate philosophical agendas also underpin certain arguments which will truck no design that isn't wholly in accord with their beliefs. No constructive, viable suggestions have yet been presented; the original scheme by Thalis, now, that is bland and unimaginative.
> The current proposal isn't perfect - people will never agree on what is! - but it's a bloody sight better than the alternatives so far proposed officially or unofficially. I just hope that the architect & developer are encouraged to be a bit more imaginative in the refinement of the design, but 'pray' that it won't be dumbed down by nitpicking detail, dumb regulations and carping negative criticism.


Brizer,

I appreciate your point of view, but what helped spark the controversy on the Opera House was how outrageous it dared to be.

This is not daring.

Just because 'outrage' has been sparked again in regards to this project by some people, doesn't mean we have got it right!!

Just because it's "a bloody sight better than Thalis' design" (which is debatable), doesnt mean you must build it. Perhaps if Thalis employed the unfettered architectural licence which LL decided to employ in this scheme, they would have come up with something different.

There are plenty of architects with not a lot of work right now in Sydney. I can guarantee you there are plenty of brilliant Australians willing to trump the rubbish which is the current proposal.

Given the disparity in the current proposal and the original Competition intent, it would appear the rules have changed somewhat.

Therefore, the government owes it to its people and it's talented professionals to re-scheme the masterplan based on what would appear to be a new set of rules.


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## Avatar (Sep 11, 2002)

I think any type of competition should have had no rules and regulatory controls applied. We might then have a better selection of designs to build on.

The design panel has made a mockery of their postion and bastardised their own criteria in the final selection. The entire project should again be put out to competition. It's a failure akin to the WTC debarcle IMO.

The final design isn't bad, it's simply not good either. It's really not much of anything but typical Keatingesque collanades, manufactured parks and Norwest business park popped on it's side. I see no value added by the design team that couldn't have been generated here by local designers and architects. We needed something ambitious rather than safe. If this is all the state government can come up with on what is our last piece of major land in the CBD then I'd hope they have another emerging plan for the entire redevelopment of existing built sites in the CBD, something with a little more visionary thinking.

We could have gotten something like this... I am sure many would prefer it too.


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## jpsolarized (May 3, 2009)

all the buildings are looking good, except for the red one....no relation whatsoever with the other icons in the city


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## nameless dude (Dec 16, 2008)

I wouldn't be complaining so much about this design. Remember what we were all going to get?



























This:









vs our current design


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## Fabian (Sep 11, 2002)

Avatar, the submissions you are using generally didn't meet the criteria and hence were not considered. Come back to this thread when you find one that you like that did meet it.

And we should all be happy with what we are getting. It could have been something plain. Thalis had his chance to meet the criteria as requested, but he didn't.


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## slenderbeam (Feb 23, 2010)

Fabian said:


> Avatar, the submissions you are using generally didn't meet the criteria and hence were not considered. Come back to this thread when you find one that you like that did meet it.
> 
> And we should all be happy with what we are getting. It could have been something plain. Thalis had his chance to meet the criteria as requested, but he didn't.


???

Thalis won the competition, you nut. The rules changed after the fact - it's pretty obvious!!!


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## mc88 (Oct 15, 2008)

> We could have gotten something like this... I am sure many would prefer it too.


I think your love for this proposal comes from the fact that it has three supertalls in it, more than anything else. I'd say that this proposal - while I like the heights and the general layout of it - epitomises everything I didn't want for this development. That is, a group of cloned towers. It doesn't look like a natural extension of the city and if it happened not to age well, there'd be this awful section of the city in a very prominent spot.



> Thalis won the competition, you nut. The rules changed after the fact - it's pretty obvious!!!


Thalis can whinge all he wants. The envelope that he created was absolute rubbish and would have resulted in short, blocky towers and a complete lack of integration between parklands and the city. I agree with the sentiments (I think it was Keating who said this, but not positive) that if the buildings weren't integrated with the parklands and it would become an unsafe place. Whether you like this design or not, the best thing that could have happened to this project was scrapping Thalis' work. It was dreadful.


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## Avatar (Sep 11, 2002)

I actually like what they did with the land, and i'd rather three cloned generic supertalls than what they propose now. I hate what they are considering for the parkland I am vehemently opposed to reshaping it to a rounded form like it was pre settlement.

As far as I am now concerned **** the city. It's an embarrassing shitheap anyway, It's high time we started again and created a new focus, I'd like to see white bay redeveloped too and create a new city centre around darling harbour. I'd even go far as to say F the whole lot off and start again in North Sydney. We have so much potential and all of it is constantly squandered. When a massive parcel comes up what do we do ... we simply waste it on a shite project with little to no vision. This was a chance to drag Sydney kicking and screaming into the future on a world scale and we are set to fail dismally.


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

Those also against anything and everything
- The Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore
- The majority of online newspaper readers
- The majority of social media respondents


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## SydneyCity (Nov 14, 2010)

Clover is a joke. She needs to go ASAP.


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## Fabian (Sep 11, 2002)

A recent report by the Nine Network Australia relating to the progress at Barangaroo. This was screened on December 10 2013.






By the way, this is what the final product should look like. The hotel is now on the land and will include a high rollers casino and apartments. It will be the tallest skyscraper in Sydney at 273 metres tall. The apartment towers to its right are still going through the design and approval process. 

The major towers are now:

Crown Sydney - 273 metres/70 floors
International Towers (Tower 1) - 217 metres/49 floors
International Towers (Tower 2) - 178 metres/43 floors
International Towers (Tower 3) - 168 metres/39 floors
Apartment Tower 1 - 240 metres/70 floors
Apartment Tower 2 - 190 metres/60 floors
Apartment Tower 3 - 110 metres/30 floors

The details for the major apartment towers are yet to be confirmed.


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## Tyco75 (Jun 29, 2011)

Beautiful.


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