Minister considers relocation exemptions for some public housing residents at The Rocks

By Jayne Margetts and Thuy Ong  Fri 7 Aug 2015, 8:28am    

Photo: Residents of the Sirius building want the State Government to halt the relocation process. (ABC News: Jayne Margetts)      

 

Public housing tenants facing eviction at The Rocks in inner Sydney are calling on the New South Wales Government to stop the relocation process while alternative options are considered.

The State Government is selling off homes at Millers Point, including the Sirius building, to fund the creation of new housing across the state as the waiting list for public housing in NSW tops 59,000.
The Sirius apartment complex was built over 35 years ago for ageing public housing tenants displaced during the 1970s when the area around The Rocks was being redeveloped.
Resident Cherie Johnson is one of the seven residents left in the Sirius apartments and says she does not want to leave the community.
"We all love, care and respect one another in this community. If anything goes wrong we band together and that's the way it is, it's like a little country town," she said.
"The first day we moved here [we went] the following morning to Miller's Point to buy a newspaper and ladies in the town [said] 'good morning' and I thought how beautiful is that."

Photo: Myra Demetriou (centre) with friends in her Sirius building apartment in The Rocks. (ABC News: Jayne Margetts)

Minister for Family and Community Services Brad Hazzard said he was considering exemptions for some residents.

"It'll be full steam ahead for the sales at Millers Point of the vacant properties, but I'm certainly talking to a number of people down there who have raised particular issues with me and seeing if there is any possibility to finding some balance to the issue," he said.
In a letter to independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, the minister said: "Millers Point tenants have first choice of any available social housing property across NSW".
But he acknowledged individual circumstances could mean finding a suitable property would be more difficult for some than others.
He said he would continue to consult with community members and other stakeholders to hear feedback over the course of the project.
"It's just on your mind all the time, to destroy and pull apart, tear apart this beautiful community, loving community that we have," Ms Johnson said.
I can't believe that it's happening. I'm devastated."

National Trust considering heritage-listing for Sirius Building

Amid the tussle between the residents and the government is another bone of contention — the National Trust is considering a proposal to have the building heritage listed with public submissions closing next month.
Myra Demetriou, who is blind and injured from a fall, returned to the Sirius apartments today for a visit and said it was important for her that she is allowed to stay.
"I dream about my place every night and I wake up and think 'Oh I'm still in the nursing home' so it's very nice to be here," she said.
"I'd like to see them try and put me out."
The Sirius apartment building was built for people on low incomes who needed a place to move to and wanted to stay in the community, said its architect, Tao Gofers.
He is backing calls from residents for the State Government to keep some of the apartments as public housing.
"I think a reasonable compromise would be for them to sell some of the units and use the money from those units to support the other special units like the handicap units and the aged pensioner units, so that you have an actual mix," he said.

RESOURCED: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-06/the-rocks-public-housing-residents-relocation-halt-alternatives/6678638 

We've lost our inner larrikin and bland is the result

August 5, 2015  Elizabeth Farrelly






Illustration: Rocco Fazzari.

                                 Australians. We flatter ourselves as larrikins, carousing like noble loons across the culture-scape but, actually, we're tame as. We think we're individuated and diverse but, in fact, we're staggeringly conformist.  We imagine ourselves so "out there" but are, in fact, so quiet. Ssh. Sleeping here.

Take Sydney's current development boom. You don't hear much about it. Mostly what you hear is housing shortage, desperate need, just build it. But the consequent boom, with an anticipated $30-$40 billion 10-year development spend in the city alone, is probably the biggest ever. Demand and supply are both intense – queueing renters and rocketing prices, cranes and noise and dust.
You might expect such market euphoria to produce an equal exuberance of product, a wild sushi-train of choice, sized, cut and garnished to every nuance of need and taste. But a simple Saturday stroll around the latest show homes demonstrates one overwhelming fact. Across the land, from Blacktown to Dover Heights, the new Sydney dwelling is exactly – weirdly – the same.
It's as though one pencil – one design-mind – were behind the lot. And in a way that's true.

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Look at last week's makeover proposal for the Sirius building in the Rocks. This fine building, designed in 1978 by Tao Gofers for the Government Architect, is a rare Sydney instance of mid-century Brutalism. The makeover, by Chris Bosse​ for the developer lobby-group Urban Taskforce, purports to "save" it but is actually worse than demolition. Bosse is a fine architect, but the scheme is an insult.
You may not like the Sirius. That's OK. Brutalism is an acquired taste – and that's the problem. No-one bothers to acquire taste any more. These days, you like it or you don't. Being an acquired taste is the kiss of death. Race you to the bottom.
But Brutalism should not be so lightly dismissed. Key fact: Brutalism is not brutal. Its manifesto – articulated in The New Brutalism (1966) by to-die-for writer Reyner Banham​ – shows a style striving for heightened contrast, material authenticity, compositional verve and intellectual control.
My personal genre faves are Howell Killick and Partridge's gloriously textural 1956 terraces at Hampstead Heath, Atelier 5's coolly concrete Seidlung Halen​ housing in Berne (1961) and Le Corbusier's disciplined theatrics at Maisons Jaoul​ at Neuilly, Paris (1956).
All exhibit a delicate equipoise between solid and transparency, order and disorder, discipline and play. But above all, they show a mastery of light, finessing its fall across texture, material and form.
Sydney had few Brutalist buildings; now it has fewer. The best was the State Office Block, in which Premier Robert Askin effectively sacked Jorn Utzon​. Designed by Ken Woolley in 1964, it skilfully juxtaposed glass, concrete and bronze with a naivety and sophistication worthy of the Japanese. But the government flogged it, Lend Lease demolished it and now instead we have Renzo Piano's Aurora Place, 1997. At least it's lovely.
Bosse's defacing of the Sirius is a less good deal. Bosse has form in re-facing Brutalism. A previous scheme wrapped UTS' much maligned tower in slinky white cobwebs; an idea they should devoutly resist. Now it's the Sirius, up for sale or demolition or both by yet another government that gives not a hoot for history, architecture, social housing or city texture.
The Urban Taskforce proposal smooths and sanitises this gruff, square Bauhaus TV stack into a celestial bridal vision in lace and taffeta, all snowy render, anodised glazing and a full clacking set of Gold Coast duckbill balconies.
Saved? It's like saying, "Darling I love you, and if you could just straighten your nose, shorten your thighs and triple your boobs, I'm yours forever."
It isn't just about visuals. It's about the strategic erasure of a textured, varied and responsive world view for one of anonymous blandness. Soon the whole of Sydney will look this way.
The Sirius was designed to rehouse public tenants displaced by demolitions in the Rocks. A rambling 12-storey stack, it was moulded in a way unheard of today, around long interviews with particular tenants, accommodating their needs in a variety of flat-types that ranged from one-to-four-bedroom apartments, split-level units and two and three-storey walk-ups.
These days, we design not for humans but for work-bots sans books or pianos, mess or children; sans strange habits, filthy visitors, unforeseen emotions, weirdnesses, wildness or whims. No departure from the minimum bedroom, quick shower, stand-up marble breakfast, rush to work. Definitely no larrikins.
In today's development paradigm – those zillions of white-gridded glassy soulless things with some fake timber and focus-group names like Ikon, Marq, Sparq, Altitude, Latitude that are spreading like a disease across the metropolis – the mix is determined not by demand but by profit. So it's 90 per cent studios or one-bedders, a few twos and almost nothing that could remotely accommodate a family as proper cities do.
This paradigm comes straight from a 2002 document, the Residential Flat Design Pattern Book – aka The Yellow Book – now the Apartment Design Guide. It was part of a push by Chris Johnson, then government architect, for "design-led planning". Responding to Bob Carr's hatred of Anzac Parade's famous redbrick walk-ups, it wanted everything white and glassy. Oh, and it banned non-architects from designing apartments.
Johnson argued for uniformity. "Just visualise Rome, Paris or Venice," he wrote. "It is the consistency of the buildings that gives these cities their character." He didn't mention the cultivated proportion, generous space, quality build and noble patronage that make those cityscapes feel wonderful. Or that Sydney, by contrast, thrives on diversity.
Have laced up the straitjacket, Johnson jumped fence to head the Urban Taskforce. There, he's done more to accelerate the current boom than any other person: consistently talking up the housing shortage, lobbying for ever-more density, pushing strata reforms to ease demolition, pressing to shrink one-bed minimums from 58sqm to 50sqm. And commissioning the Sirius' wedding shroud.
In cities as in behaviour, our choice is stark: do we want uniformity, preventing the worst but also the best? Or do we want freedom-to-fail, flavour and personality, larrikinism and genius? What's it to be, riotous light-and-dark, or two-and-a-bit tasteful shades of grey?


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/weve-lost-our-inner-larrikin-and-bland-is-the-result-20150804-girrs5.html#ixzz3i6I7b8Bz

State Government departments lock horns over Sirius building

The Sirius building was originally designed for social housing. Source: Peter Wald, Wikicommons

 August 6, 2015 by Christopher Harris

By EMILY CONTADOR-KELSALL

Contention continues to rise over the future of the Sirius Building as state government bodies and the local community are locked in an argument over heritage, development potential and revenue.

Architect Chris Bosse released plans for the Rocks building last week that included the addition of balconies onto Sirius, adapting its current design.

The plans were commissioned by Urban Taskforce who asked Mr Bosse to create “a new layer for Sirius that respects the original design while improving amenity”.

While the plans have been applauded, architect and chairman of the Millers Point, Dawes Point, The Rocks and Walsh Bay Resident Action Group, John McInerney, does not think the

plans “do justice to the quality of the building”, which has long stood as social housing.

“[If Sirius was heritage listed] I don’t think it would ever be allowed to be changed to the extent that Chris Bosse has shown it,” he said.

The state government has been gradually emptying the Sirius Building alongside many other social housing tenancies in Millers Point. Mr McInerney told City Hub that the government has continued to “move people out the extent that there are only about 15 left in the whole complex”.

The building is an example of the brutalist school of architecture and was built to rehouse public housing tenants who were moved out of The Rocks during its redevelopment in the 1960s and 70s.

The resident action group is fighting to have the Sirius building heritage listed, which would affect any potential changes and development of the site.

A spokesperson from the Office of Environment and Heritage said the National Trust of NSW nominated the Sirius Building for listing on the State Heritage Register.

“In mid July the Heritage Council formally notified their intention to consider listing the building,” the spokesperson said.

If the building were to be listed, any proposed changes, including Mr Bosse’s design, would need to follow the approval process and would be assessed on merit, according to the spokesperson.

Despite the office’s consideration of Sirius’ heritage status, the Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) does not support the Sirius Building being listed on the State

Heritage Register, according to a statement provided to City Hub.

The FACS statement said the reason for this was missed opportunity for proceeds to build new social housing.

Minister for Social Housing Brad Hazzard also opposes the proposed heritage listing, according to the same statement, because of its impact on the revenue from the sale of the site.

 “Any decision to put a heritage order on it would reduce the value of the building and of course the multi-million dollar views which the government wants to turn into multi-million dollars worth of public housing.” Mr Hazzard said.

But Mr McInerney said he disagreed “with the presumption, that [heritage listing] will reduce the value”.

“I don’t see how Brad Hazzard’s office, presumably his office or him… how they can come to that conclusion.”

Also against Sirius’ heritage listing was Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson, who said in a statement that the taskforce is concerned “that state heritage listing will simply freeze the current raw, brutal look of the building and minimise the amenity for future residents”.

Mr Bosse’s design under Urban taskforce “demonstrates that the building can become more friendly in its appearance while respecting the original design intention,” according to Mr Johnson. 

 

RESOURCED: