Anticharisma

Glass Steel and Concrete – Is everyone blind?

Any city with modern buildings and publiuc works will unfortunately conform in style and and function to the current flavour of the month – so to speak, which happens to be the amazing willingness of planners and architects and society in general to accept and seemingly not notice or not care about the fact that all major buildings and public works – almost without exception are now constructed out of copious quantities of plate glass steel and concrete. Any city in the world would do for an example, but lets use Melbourne as our study material. It will become really obvious to the reader that errors have been made in the whole deal from planning and execution.

Generally urban environments ought to be safe for pedestrians. Go for a run through the city and find yourself confronted with the possibility of being seriously injured should you stumble and fall against one of the many plate glass walls and walkway barriers. These are made in sections of square glass with barely rounded edges so that the fence begins to resemble a giant serrated glass knife. Could they at least join the glass segments togeather so that the serrated quality gets nullified?!

For a long time now Melbourne’s Yarra river has been the site of protracted construction ‘efforts’. The whole waterfront experience is really dissapointing. What should be built to last a thousand years will barely last 5 years. Im not kidding! The sculptures in the walkway at Docklands are particularly dissapointing….Are they constructed of Granite? No, Marble?, no Steel or other alloy? No, No they are constructed of FIBERGLASS! White paint chipping around the circumference and base reveals fiberglass and tap your knuckles against one of these structures and sense the tackiness. The ancient Romans and Greeks did not build Aquaducts and Temples out of temporary materials like we are in our major cities in current times. The peice de resisstonce at the other end of the river, is a walkway bridge connecting Flinders street with the Yarra river opposite the Rowing Club house, which on closer inspection is observed to have been constructed so that the floor – of reclaimed wooden planks is such that no bicycles may ride over the bridge, because the planks have been spaced apart to an extent greater than most bike tyres can handle! This is not a purposely included design feature, or rather the designers did purposely design it this way, however they did not purposely set out to make a bridge that is not compatible with bicycles – for purpose of keeping bikes off the bridge or other, no, infact the designers did plan the bridge just as it is with the poorly spaced planks, however they lacked the common sense to comprehend that the unintended consequence of their design results in a safety and incompatability issue for cyclists with regard to the bridge. Why build a tax payer funded pedestrian bridge that is incompatible by design with bicycles and that bicycles cannot use? At the two entrances to the structure, the bridge displays a sign indicating that the bridge cannot be crossed by bicycles. How exasperating that this white elephant is tolerated at all! I say this since a fix is easy and the remedy would cost little.

Multi levels are a feature of all urban areas and ground elevations will tend to vary markedly and links between elevations are always necessary to allow access between elevations where contours are too steep. In the Yarra river side near the Ferris wheel, there is a set of stairs linking the upper level walkway with the lower riverside walkway. as a kind of hodge podge fund-cut attempt to create a trendy side walls to the stairs, the designers have put in two huge jagged steel plates with yet more sharp edges for lovers froliking at dimley lit nights to sever themselves on or for passing cyclists or joggers to have the dubious opportunity to impale themselves upon. Who exactly is responsible for this water front fuck up of epic proportions? Why is there no pretence to quality?

Further the construction time has lingered since two years ago and nothing much gets done. Much of the river front areas are more like a perpetual unmanned building sight instead of a water front to be proud of. If one wants to run South along the River side from the Exhibition centre towards the sea, one cannot travel more than 200 Meters without being completely cut off and blocked from moving forward by the presence of supposedly temporary construction barriers. You can’t run along much of the river; there is too much construction stuff in the way. Year after year. Where is the efficiency? The planners ought not to start a project and then leave it in a limbo status half way through completion.

At this point it needs to be said that although opinions vary and some people are overly picky while others dont give a stuff, it has to be said that from a common sense generalised perspective no one who sees this Yarra waterfront will deny that it is done shoddily. Its just that obvious. Its a self evident fact.

Seriously can modern designers stop using segmented right angle edged glass plates to construct walkway guide walls!? Near the ‘Crowne’ Hotel there is a multi level area that is seperated by a steel plate that juts out of the concrete and portrudes dangerously forward towards the progressively splitting levels of concrete surface, such that a cyclist speeding along in this dim-lit area at night may well easily fail to see both the subtlely changing split levels and the steel plate that divides them. The cyclist could ride strait into this steel plate and sustain horrific injury. Here is a prime example of the dopey brained application of the flavour of the month when it comes to modern architecture: Steel glass and concrete.