corporatised world is the only thing of value and
that public services and servants don’t deserve
such fine buildings (as said quite explicitly
at the time of sale). But this also displays an
economic fallacy, seemingly perpetrated by
Treasury. Businesses change offices or move
to new buildings every 10 or 15 years because
they get tax breaks and deals for office fit-outs,
which also are available to the developers who
erected the building. But government doesn’t
receive such tax incentives. So what’s the reason
for government to shuffle around leasing lesser
commercial buildings, which are then an ongoing
public debt when they could have first-class
public buildings held for the longer-term?
Regardless of all the other substantial arguments,
why even from an economic standpoint don’t
Treasury and government appreciate the true
value of public assets?A&D: Turning to ‘disposable’ buildings, even
buildings that are landmark award-winning
designs are frequently subject to alteration.
It must be heart-wrenching for an architect
to see their prize creations altered.PT: It depends whether the alteration is
intelligent and sympathetic, or whether it’s
simply vandalism. As ‘Public Sydney’ shows,
virtually every public building in the city has
been extended or changed use (the Department
of Lands is one of the few that hasn’t). The 1815
military hospital on Observatory Hill became a
model school and then it became the National
Trust headquarters. Walsh Bay’s wharves
have become the city’s most magical theatre
venue. On the edge of the Botanic Gardens,
the Macquarie-era government stables have
been turned into the Conservatorium of Music.
If we look at the wonderful public group onMacquarie Street, almost all of them have
changed dramatically. I don’t think those
involve loss. Nor is it primarily a question of
authorship. It’s about how their public purpose
has been renewed, their history respected and
their design qualities being brought up to a new
consciousness and relevance. That can be done
in all those examples that I’ve cited, incredibly
sympathetically and well.A&D: Your architectural practice Hill Thalis
has long worked on the design of apartment
buildings. What’s your thinking about that?PT: One of the important obligations for
architects is to improve the quality of housing,
and that’s nowhere more important than in the
design of apartments. Unlike many architects
of my generation, I grew up in three-storey
walk-up flats, three boys in 100sqm. And even
as a child I thought we could do better, yet that
wasn’t a major area of work I thought would be
possible when I graduated. But it’s become a
major theme for our architectural practice.
As I learnt working in Paris while undertaking
my masters, the design of urban housing
is critically important. Good housing is so
important in creating the city’s fabric, in creating
fine streets, in giving people a dignified place to
live. Such buildings should have a considered
environmental sensibility as, like all good
housing, they’re designed with excellent natural
light, cross ventilation, appropriate landscape
and a sense of sociability about them. Urban
housing is a very tough area to work in, both in
terms of development and planning pressures,
and to achieve construction quality. But we love
the challenge, for as architects there’s a real
sense of achievement when you can get all
these things to align through good design.A&D: What about the suburban and regional
housing on the traditional block? The bungalows
knocked up by local builders 100 years ago now
stand out for high ceilings and nice windows and
doors. What gets built today has often got little
of this charm.PT: There’s a touch of romanticism in that.
Australian suburbia right back to the mid 1800s
has been spec-built standard housing. Housing
in Sydney in the 19th century consisted of a
mix of freestanding houses, semis, or terraces,
with some used as boarding houses. Few at
the time thought terraces were anything other
than the most basic speculative housing.
Fundamental to mass housing is economy of
land and construction, so you are going to have
whatever the standard of the time replicated.
What’s different over recent decades is the
growing size of the individual house and the
decreasing number of people in each house.
Once there were five people per house; now the
occupancy rate is only 2.7, yet the houses are
double or quadruple in size.
Previously you had suburbs structured
around the train line, the tram line or the ferry;
but since WW2 we’ve seen poor suburban
plans based on the car. So our cities have
sprawled across ever greater areas, without
the sense of physical or social structure
characteristic of the more walkable suburbs
based on public transport. Surely there’s no
reason to subdivide another centimetre of
fringe farmland, flood plain or environmentally
sensitive land? For we are the most profligate
wasters of urban land in the world. As we have
shown in our urban projects over decades,
informed urban design can produce more
memorable and efficient plans than the
standard suburban layouts.“We are the biggest
waster of urban land in
the world. Surely we can
use it more intelligently.”
Architecture & design /PeoPle/ jul-sep 201912ADQ3_010_012_Thalis_V2.indd 12 26/7/19 4:49 pm