BARANGAROO
by Deborah Singerman

When as tantalising a site as 22 hectares on the north-western waterfront edge of the core Central Business District (CBD) becomes available in a location-obsessed city like Sydney, it cannot fail to be seen as an extraordinary opportunity to remake the urban environment.

Mostly hidden behind wire mesh, the land parcel has been a port for a hundred years, operating commercial shipping wharves and passenger terminals. Containerisation sliced away the headland and a concrete apron was built. But it was shipping company Patrick Corporation’s decision not to renew its lease and to move to more modern facilities at Port Kembla down the coast that presented the chance to reinvigorate this currently unprepossessing and under-used area.

“We’re working with a blank canvas,” says Dr Robert Lang, CEO of Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, the New South Wales (NSW) Government agency responsible for managing the project’s delivery. “Here is an opportunity to create a new growth centre for the 21st century that will bring new internationally competitive business and a new workforce to Sydney.

“As Australia’s only global city, the challenge for Sydney is to remain globally competitive and to do that it has to continue to grow and be relevant and provide spaces that global companies wish to be in.”

Previously known as East Darling Harbour the site is bounded by a strange mix of well-known parts of Sydney and largely neglected ones. Sydney Harbour foreshore lies to the west and north. To the east are Millers Point, The Rocks district and Hickson Road, only latterly being discovered most famously for environmentally sustainable office buildings headed by Lend Lease’s 30 The Bond. To the south are the recreational and residential Kings Street Wharf/Cockle Bay and Darling Harbour.

It has since been renamed Barangaroo, after a powerful Aboriginal woman from Sydney’s early history. The public naming competition attracted 1,600 entries. Some commentators joked about the panel’s choice rhyming with kangaroo; others that it downplayed the area’s name of Hungry Mile during the Depression. This is just an example of the scrutiny the site will be under during its development.

The land is owned by the NSW Government. State protocol also identifies it as strategic foreshore and a Global Sydney Strategic Centre within the NSW Government’s Metropolitan Strategy (announced late 2005 to show how Sydney will cater for an extra 1.1 million people by 2031). In 2006 it was also named a Major Project under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 which, among development control measures, gives the Minister for Planning Frank Sartor consent authority.

“The twin objectives are that 50 percent is to be commercially developed and the other 50 percent to be turned into public, open space,” says Lang. Criteria for the two-stage international design competition, which ran between 2005 and 2006, reflected this intended division including:
• at least 11 hectares of new public park;
• a new commercial centre on at least 75 percent of the developed area to provide managed growth of Sydney’s CBD;
• a walkway (1.4 kilometres of restored public access) to complete the state government’s 14-kilometre central foreshore walk from Anzac Bridge in the west to Woolloomooloo in the east; and
• a living recreation and business foreshore precinct reconnecting the area back to the city.

A shortlist of five was drawn up from 137 international and national entries. The jury included architects, academics, government officials and urban proponents such as former prime minister Paul Keating. The winner was from a team comprising Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects, Paul Berkemeier Architect and Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture.

The winning design combines a new civic boulevard from Walsh Bay’s somewhat isolated, renovated wharves between the top end of Barangaroo and Circular Quay, and King Street Wharf at the south; a harbourside park along the length of the western waterfront (according to Hill Thalis’s review of the competition scheme: “an unalienable public place belonging to the citizens of Sydney”) with a headland park at the northern tip; and a new commercial quarter integrated with the CBD, supported by a network of streets, squares, promenades and lanes.

“Our competition scheme embraces the big city condition. It is a large-scale reworking and integration of the lost waterfront with the structure and fabric of the city,” says director of Hill Thalis, Philip Thalis.

Although criticised at the time for not providing an architectural icon to lift it above what Sydney Morning Herald architecture critic Elizabeth Farrelly called “the bog-ordinary”, the winning scheme was widely regarded as best meeting the real challenge, “to deliver back to the city part of the city, and not another sideshow of ‘spectacle’ development”, as Adam Haddow wrote in the NSW chapter magazine of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

Thalis has a Master of Urban Architecture from Paris-Belleville university and admits a great affection for and knowledge of this part of Sydney. “We wanted to achieve a confident new interface between the city centre and the harbour, so that it is not an urban fantasy. Our scheme does everything possible physically so that wouldn’t be an outcome.”

As with all design competitions, it is how the intentions of a winning scheme are followed through that counts. “The design competition was for an urban plan, not an architectural solution,” Lang says. Hill Thalis’s involvement has effectively ended though they are free to join up with any future consortia, he says.

The only documents so far approved by Planning Minister Sartor, in February 2007, are the concept plan and State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) Amendment following an environmental assessment. These define a maximum permitted Gross Floor Area (GFA) of 399,800 square metres for the entire mixed use zone—almost two city blocks wide, says Lang. These cover tourist, retail, community, residential and predominantly commercial office space. The housing component of around 700 residences has been criticised for being too low but Lang says the zone was always meant to be a CBD extension, not a domestic suburb.

There are eight development block envelopes allowing for a range of building configurations with larger GFAs and heights (up to 180,000 square metres and 180 metres respectively) at the southern end, commensurate with other CBD towers, down to around 30 metres at the parklands’ end. Demolition started last December and the NSW Government will be calling for expressions of interest from development consortia in 2008. Early works are expected to start in 2009 and all work on the built form and foreshore areas is to be completed by 2020.

“The timeframe is to make sure the market is able to absorb the developed space in an appropriate way,” Lang says.

Critics such as Councillor John McInerney, chairman of the City of Sydney’s Strategic Planning Committee, are concerned that the emphasis on selling off sites “seems to be driven by an attempt to get money for the state government rather than for reasons of improvement to the city environment”.

To this Lang emphasises that the land is offered on leasehold only, for 99 years. He also points to the government’s commitment to delivering the 11-hectare headland park and public recreational space, the same size as Hyde Park, a major city centre park. “The overall site has to be self-sufficient and it was a deliberate decision by the government for this to be a very balanced site, balancing public good, social outcomes with economic outcomes and environmental benefits, including water and energy savings and world-benchmark sustainable design. You would probably get better money if you did not put these constraints on the site but the Minister has made it clear that future development must satisfy all of these needs.”

The concept plan also reinstates the northern headland and further modifications to the northern and southern coves are likely. Public domain landscaping including pedestrian connections are discussed and a maximum 8,500 square metres is set aside for a passenger terminal. Barangaroo’s commercial development is expected to create 30,000 construction jobs, as well as house around 15,000 office and other workers when completed. A restrictive car parking policy is proposed and public transport options such as further use of major city station Wynyard (just five minutes walk away), ferries, bicycle routes, bus services and a light rail loop, all need to be investigated, especially as transport infrastructure is a perennial Sydney problem.

An implementation plan for transport is one of eight such plans to be prepared. Design excellence is another. Public domain and built form design panels are to be established and design competitions will be conducted if required.

The competition scheme defined “a clear framework, open to enrichment by the hands of many architect and landscape architects into the future”. With details such as laneways, cafés, restaurants, galleries, and other examples of interactive urban activity still a long way off, there will be plenty of scope later on to take up this call and help turn the area into what Lang is confident will be a new landmark for Sydney.

Images courtesy of Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects Pty Ltd