is a critic, academic and former architect. She is the founder of The Better Cities Initiative, author of Killing Sydney: The Fight for a City’s Soul and hosts The Sydneyist on 89.7FM.
National Capital Planning Commission/Shalom Baranes
Donald Trump’s culture war extends to his insistence on ‘beauty’ in architecture. Why has his preferred classical style been such a popular choice among totalitarian leaders?
From Palaeolithic cave paintings to cruciform churches and Sydney’s Kings Cross, this deceptively primitive intersection of two lines has enduring symbolic power.
The destruction of more than 10,000 homes in the Los Angeles fires is a powerful reminder that Australia needs a total rethink of how and where we build to live.
Beauty, truth and justice are at the heart of a functioning, healthy metropolis – three Platonic values our governments and developers too often choose to ignore.
Sydneysiders have embraced their underground Metro and other new subterranean spaces that explore the shadows of a city often perceived as bright but shallow.
Australia’s housing crisis arises from a culture that normalises windfall gains, from the grants of stolen land more than two centuries ago, to the investors who flourish on rental income and tax breaks.
If buildings are shaped by the values and cultures of the day, those that are now proliferating demonstrate how humanity has been sacrificed for efficiency.
