[COM] Torrens Footbridge | $40m

[JamesXander]

Just a question does anyone else hate the festival centre?


I think its so bland and ugly.

[AtD]

I like it. The landscaping, on the other hand...

[monotonehell]

Just a question does anyone else hate the festival centre?
I think its so bland and ugly.

It's all VERY '70's and tired and worn out now. The materials they used didn't weather in a good way. I've taken some interesting photos there for uni, but using a lot of arty farty techniques to make it look interesting. When it was in fashion, shiny and new I can image it looked very good. I appreciate old Modern art, but it's probably time to redevelop the plaza, as most of the rest of the Festival Centre has been renovated.

[JamesXander]

Just a question does anyone else hate the festival centre?
I think its so bland and ugly.

It's all VERY '70's and tired and worn out now. The materials they used didn't weather in a good way. I've taken some interesting photos there for uni, but using a lot of arty farty techniques to make it look interesting. When it was in fashion, shiny and new I can image it looked very good. I appreciate old Modern art, but it's probably time to redevelop the plaza, as most of the rest of the Festival Centre has been renovated.

I think we should start from scartch. If we are meant to be the arts capital of Australia surely we need an iconic theatre.


I always imagine a very spikey design. Almost like a hedgehog. If you can imagine that. It would look great IMO. A light brown colour with tens of spikes going everywhere. I think that would look awesome, and very original.

[JamesXander]

[crawf]

I completely disagree, I really like the Festival centre. The plaza just needs a good revamp, plus it would be good to see the building lit up in different colours at night to brighten up the city skyline.

[Matt]

I like Festival Theatre itself, but the plaza next to the casino/Parliament House is hideous and they need to do something to it.
It's badly dated and dilapidated.

[monotonehell]

I completely disagree, I really like the Festival centre. The plaza just needs a good revamp, plus it would be good to see the building lit up in different colours at night to brighten up the city skyline.

Ohhhh.. I thought he just meant the Plaza. If you mean the entire Festival Centre, well it's already an icon of Adelaide and is perfectly attractive and interesting. The Plaza next door was completely ignored and some other parts selectively ignored in the recent revamp of the surrounds, which I thought was a mistake. It's currently looking bitsy. The whole area needs a consistent makeover.

[Tyler_Durden]

I think the Festival Theatre is ok and is an attempt at something unique and different but it seems that it just doesn't quite succeed in its intention to be iconic. I mean, it should be iconic, and it sort of is, but I get the feeling that we Adelaideans don't really treasure it or love it. And that's probably because it just falls short. I don't know why, it just does. But it's not bad either, it's just so-so.

And while it often features in photos taken of Adelaide from North of the Torrens, it is only part of the cityscape. It's almost as if it is only photographed because of its location rather than because of what it is. It is rarely, if ever, used by itself as an iconic landmark to promote/signify Adelaide.

[JamesXander]

Its just a cheap rip off of the Sydney Opera house, well that what it seems like anyway.

It isn't Iconic at all. They are just boxes, crappy white boxes, surrounded by a plaza which is like a 50 year old mum, stuck in the 70's.

[Tyler_Durden]

Alexander Downer wrote a great article in today's Advertiser about the benefits of a magnificent public building of cultural significance, and calls on our leaders to give us one. I agree with him so much and thought it was apt that he mentioned France as an example of a nation that puts so much emphasis on culture because it's something they do so well. Unfortunately here in the country and this state it appears to come last on everyone's list of priorities.

[Wayno]

Alexander Downer wrote a great article in today's Advertiser about the benefits of a magnificent public building of cultural significance, and calls on our leaders to give us one. I agree with him so much and thought it was apt that he mentioned France as an example of a nation that puts so much emphasis on culture because it's something they do so well. Unfortunately here in the country and this state it appears to come last on everyone's list of priorities.

here's a copy of Downers article:

Alexander Downer reveals his plan to revitalise Adelaide
EIGHTEEN months ago I arrived at the Elysee Palace in Paris and was greeted on the front steps by (then) President Jacques Chirac. We spoke briefly about the Australian contribution to the new Quai Branly museum, France's $400 million museum of indigenous art.

The President was animated. The work of Australian indigenous artists was outstanding; it was unique; it was beautiful.

I readily agreed and was filled with pride that our Aboriginal artists had made such a global mark. Pride, they say, comes before a fall. France's ageing head of state turned to me and said: "And please give my best wishes to Helen Clark".

The next time I saw New Zealand's Prime Minister I passed on President Chirac's best wishes but I thought it best not to tell John Howard that the President of France thought the Prime Minister of New Zealand led our country, not him.

The point of this story is that several indigenous Australian artists made a spectacular contribution to a major new museum in Paris. Every French President leaves one significant cultural monument to the French capital. President Chirac's monument was the Quai Branly Museum of indigenous art and culture.

Standing on North Terrace and watching the opening of the Festival on Friday night made me ask the question: who was the last premier to leave a great public building which helped advance the status, cultural depth and dynamism of our city?

Well, Steele Hall started the Festival Centre and Don Dunstan finished it.

John Bannon, Dean Brown and John Olsen built the Convention Centre. To its everlasting shame, the Howard Government built the new Federal Courts building. But that's about it, if you exclude the sports stadia.

To give Adelaide a lift, to make it stand out from the rest of Australia (and South-East Asia), Adelaide needs a new, innovative, spectacular public building.

Take Bilbao, in Northern Spain. It's a city about one-third the size of Adelaide, a port and industrial centre and the capital of the troubled Basque country. Twenty years ago it was rundown and desperate.

Today it's a dynamic regional centre which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists a year.

At the heart of Bilbao's revival has been the Guggenheim art museum. Designed by the noted American architect Frank Gehry, some say it is the finest modern building in the world.

All angles and innovation, people come from across Europe and North America to marvel at it. Since the Bilbao Guggenheim museum opened in 1997, eight new five-star hotels have opened in Bilbao.

Sure it cost a lot but Bilbao's getting the money back and then some thanks to the tourists.

Now, Adelaide is not pre-Guggenheim Bilbao. It's a fine and attractive city. But it needs a new spark. If Brisbane can build a fine new Gallery of Modern Art why can't Adelaide do better and build the most innovative, unique, attractive art museum in the southern hemisphere?

I'd build it on the Torrens where the weir restaurants are, or, controversially, on top of Mount Lofty. It would be large and house a permanent collection and be a centre for visiting exhibitions.

It would incorporate a 1000-seat concert hall. An architect with the standing of Frank Gehry or Sir Norman Foster would design it.

In 2006 I called on the chied executive of Guggenheim museums in New York to discuss this idea. He was enthusiastic about a Guggenheim museum in the southern hemisphere which could accommodate both a permanent exhibition and the spectacular mobile Guggenheim exhibitions.

OK, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. He thought maybe $300 million. That's a lot. And I'm not a big government advocate by any means.

But Australia is in per capita terms richer than Spain. The State and Federal governments could both contribute and the cost would be spread over several years. If the building was good enough, people would travel the world to see it.

And stay in our hotels, visit our restaurants, go to the Barossa and McLaren Vale and so on. They'd pay GST. The right building would win the money back.

Adelaide would be renowned throughout the world for having one of the greatest modern buildings on earth. We'd whinge about the cost while it was being built. Parkland fanatics would grumble and so on. But once built we'd be the proudest people in Australia.

No offence meant but today our state politics is so dull, so managerial, so prosaic. It's soulless.

Yet our founding fathers and the likes of Playford and Dunstan all had grand plans for South Australia.

In more recent years all we've got is that indescribably bad Entertainment Centre (where do you park?), the (somewhat better) utilitarian Convention Centre and a few commercial developments.

The people of SA and Australia generally deserve a building that would excite the world in the way presidential monuments like the Pompidou Centre or the Quai Branly museum do in France.

So let's start a debate about doing big things for Adelaide.

[rhino]

A very well written and apolitical article, giving credit where credit is due without bias and urging us all to work together - congrats to Big Al.

[Will]

Alexander Downer is spot on. Politics has become so monochrome in the last few decades. Politicians have become bean counters who are only interested in the economy. As it currently stands Adelaide is more of a Tuscany type of place to visit. Somewhere where the attraction is the lifestyle, not a particular site as such. I think that we could capture a wider market if we retained our Tuscan style tourism but enriched it with actual attractions that people can visit. For one I would like the National Motor Museum moved to the CBD. It is a great museum, however it is in the middle of nowhere. Furthermore, why not build a museum of modern art, or the national indigenous art centre; or why not even take advantage of the fact that we make Australia's best beer and establish the National Beer Centre here in Adelaide. However unfortunately due to the fact that our politicians have become soul-less automatrons, only interested in their triple AAA credit rating and the next election, such visionary projects will never come to fruition. The only hope we have is if some Adelaide-born billionaire were to make some kind of donation.

[JamesXander]

Downer should quit Federal Government now and become the new leader of the state liberals. He would do a hell of a lot more then being the opposition whatever he is now.


He would become legend if he took over.