Sensational-Adelaide.com

The Property Council has praised the State Government’s proposal for a design competition for the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital, describing the site as a critical lynchpin in the revival of the broader Riverbank precinct and essential to the ongoing health of the city’s East End.



Property Council of Australia (SA Division) Executive Director Nathan Paine said the site represented one of the best opportunities to strengthen the link between the city centre and the river.



“Adelaide has seen some major changes to the city’s excellent urban fabric in recent years, but connectivity between the city and the river remains an amazing opportunity,” Mr Paine said.



“The RAH site represents an ideal opportunity to not only make this connection, but also to create a lynchpin site along the Greater Riverbank precinct.



“We expect the final selected design will give the site a high-level economic use; this is essential to ensuring that the site is used to counter any draw of economic activity away from the city’s East End by the emerging medical precinct in the west.”

Design contest for old RAH site
SA Premier Jay Weatherill said a design competition would help decide the future of the current Royal Adelaide Hospital site.

The hospital will open at a new site at the western end of North Terrace in 2016.

The competition will open on July 18 and a winner will be chosen in December after a shortlist of six finalists is drawn up.

The Government will outline design criteria but the Premier said it did not want to pre-judge what a final design might include.

Mr Weatherill said the prize pool of $900,000 would be enough to offset the cost of the design work.

"What we're getting is the best of really anybody's ideas, narrowing it down to six, picking one two and three and that will inform the next stage in the process. We don't have to obviously have a solution until 2016 but we think this is a good way to go," he said.

He said the shortlist would include a 'people's choice' finalist.

Government architect Ben Hewett said a contest would would help attract quality designs.

"The opportunity to be able to go internationally to source the best ideas from around the world is an extraordinary opportunity to have people contributing their ideas to this city," he said.

The Opposition said the competition would pave the way for a broken promise.

Liberal health spokesman Rob Lucas said former premier Mike Rann had indicated the site would be returned to parklands.

"The Government had committed to demolish all the buildings and return it to open space parklands and the Botanic Gardens," he said.

"Personally that was never my view. There should be some reuse of the site so if the Government is paving the ground for breaking that particular commitment we'd welcome at least that particular part of it."

rev wrote:I've got an idea.
Why don't they maintain the existing RAH buildings, and lease them out to UNISA, Adelaide Uni, Flinders Uni, and other higher education institutions?
Could they convert some of the buildings into student accommodation?

Both options will bring in money for the government and help recoup some of the cost of the new RAH.

Why do we need to do anything fancy with it?
Keep it simple and turn it into a money maker.

Dazzeland wrote:

rev wrote:I've got an idea.
Why don't they maintain the existing RAH buildings, and lease them out to UNISA, Adelaide Uni, Flinders Uni, and other higher education institutions?
Could they convert some of the buildings into student accommodation?

Both options will bring in money for the government and help recoup some of the cost of the new RAH.

Why do we need to do anything fancy with it?
Keep it simple and turn it into a money maker.

You have a point but that's what Adelaide has been doing forever. Keeping it simple. This is a perfect oppurtunity for us to come up with some sort of brilliant tourist attraction that would make us a better place to visit

Ben wrote:Would be great if there was a free public park in the city with "wild" kangaroos. That would be a tourist draw card.

Will wrote: You could even throw in a 'traditional aussie pub' into the structure. Foreign tourists would love it!

mattblack wrote:1 x Eden project please. It is awsome.

Educational, architecturally amazing, fun for the whole family (que Pushbutton), adventurous, live music venue, botanic orientated.

http://www.edenproject.com