Sustainability

Art

Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome, Oil on canvas, 1757. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Marketing Italy — with Sustainability(?)…and a Word about Museums

September 12, 2012Michael Miller

In a part of Florens 2012, the academics, business figures, and other experts who attend will explore the subjects developed two years ago, within a wide-ranging scheme, specifically tailored for this meeting, mainly the theme: "from the Grand Tour to the Global Tour." Fundamentally, the way the world perceives Italy and enjoys the many extraordinary things the country has to offer descend from the Grand Tour, the capstone of an English aristocrat's education beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing on into our own time, however much its character has been democratized in the twentieth century.

Architecture | Urban Design

The Best and Worst of Sydney Urbanism, 2011

December 20, 2011Alan Miller

Unlike movies or the performing arts, architecture is not seasonal. There is no year end rush in which all the Gehrys and Koolhaases are “released,” no popcorn summer in which the Barangaroos and Ground Zeros of this world try to blow out our eye sockets with their empty spectacle. Cities just go on and on; one must make an effort to pick a moment and look back if we are ever to figure out just what on earth is going on.

Architecture | Urban Design

East and West: 1 Bligh Joins Sydney’s Big End of Town

July 19, 2011Alan Miller

No matter how many corners they cut, cities find it hard to outrun their pasts. Early decisions, however casual, however pragmatic, have a way of getting written in stone so that even long after these stones have tumbled, their consequences remain in the correspondence between certain cardinal directions and certain values. However subtle the reality on the ground, north, south east and west take on indelible local meanings. If you stand on George Street and look east down Bridge Street in downtown Sydney, it is easy to perceive the original topography of Sydney Cove, or Warrane as it was known to the Gadigal people. Bridge Street dips down toward Pitt Street and then rises up more steeply toward the Botanical Gardens at the top of the ridge. Along the low point ran the Tank Stream, now covered over, Sydney Colony’s first supply of fresh water and the reason why the city is where it is.

Architecture | Urban Design

Towards Bikeopolis, Part 1

May 4, 2011Alan Miller

One recent morning I witnessed a rare sight; two children, almost certainly brother and sister, were riding their bikes to school. They wobbled along the sidewalk of a busy road. The boy pedaled ahead on his BMX while the girl’s bike was too big for her, its chain rusted to the point where, rather than shift gears, she walked the slightest rise. Commuters alone in their cars sped by on the way to work, their kids’ schools, gym or supermarket. This being outer Sydney, the street made not the slightest accommodation for the two kids and their healthy, intrepid mode of transportation.

Architecture | Urban Design

Trash Talk: Griffin’s Willoughby Incinerator Revived

March 27, 2011Alan Miller

Between 1930 and 1938, Walter Burley Griffin and Eric Nicholls designed thirteen municipal incinerators in various Australian cities. Built in the heart of the Great Depression, these odd little buildings must have been a creative and financial godsend for Griffin, an architect whose splendid dreams were too often thwarted by unsplendid clients. The incinerators, which often sat in suburban streets, were ‘green’ infrastructure avant la lettre, fascinating both as urban history and as a possible model for the urban transformations required by the 21st century.

Architecture | Urban Design

Urban Planning: A Manifesto

March 14, 2011Alan Miller

The people of New South Wales have been anticipating the upcoming state election almost since the last election four years ago, never a good situation. As regular readers of our dispatches from Sydney know, the soon to be defeated Labor Government has for the past sixteen years, with its inimitably bland, shiny-suited glee, trashed poor old Sydney. A place which with the slightest effort could be the most beautiful city in the world has instead deteriorated into a kind of Los Angeles without a Raymond Chandler, a Melbourne without intricacy, a Singapore without ambition.

One of the most urgent tasks facing the next state government will be the reform of NSW’s broken planning system, a system I saw in action (if that is the right word) during the disillusioning two years I spent in a cubicle at the NSW Department of Planning.

Architecture | Urban Design

A Grand Tour, Part 2: Venice the Menaced

October 28, 2010Alan Miller

Venice has a secret; it is a great city for runners. Typically the urban runner faces a conundrum. Running in parks is safe and healthy, but quickly grows boring. Running on city streets can be diverting, but the staccato disruption of crosswalks frustrates any possibility of getting into a rhythm. The runner fantasizes: what if there were a city riddled with paved passages too narrow for cars, with squares, courtyards, beautiful buildings and water? What if it were completely flat? Running, especially early in the morning, reveals a different Venice, before the tour buses disgorge. As the Venice runner veers away from the broad fondamenti and seeks out the most obscure rami, a false sense of speed is created by the narrow passages and a simple run starts to feel like a video game. With no possibility of getting hit by a car, the Venice runner is free to concentrate on the sensory landscape of the city — the handcarts which collect garbage, the delivery boats full of roof tiles or toilet paper and underneath it all like a private drum roll the sound of your own footsteps on the worn pavers, mostly gray but edged with smoothed white stone wherever there is a step. It is advisable to always carry a map, but the Venice runner’s game is to notice enough details, not the names of streets but the spatial quality of them, to remain relatively un-lost.

Architecture | Urban Design

Five trees to be removed, Wahroonga Railway Station, April 2010. Photo © 2010 Alan Miller.

Tree to be Removed: Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness Turns 50

April 13, 2010Alan Miller

Robin Boyd wrote The Australian Ugliness fifty years ago. Our question is obvious: is that ugliness still with us? EXHIBIT A: An Ugly Scene in a Beautiful Place... A leaf blower whines as I write this. Mozart cannot be played loud enough to drown it out. No matter, it reminds me of a limpid Friday evening a few months ago. A ruddy sun sparkled on the leaves of the blue gums, the breeze was a gentle early summer whisper, an evening one could fall into like a calm sea. I could take it no longer. I traced the errant whine to the dead end of my street. After waving for a few seconds to catch my neighbor's attfention, he turned off his blower and removed his sensible hearing protection so we could have a conversation which went something like this: