I’ve noticed that a lot of buildings are being knocked down lately in Brisbane.
In Brisbane City, some major multi storey car parks have been knocked to the ground to make way for new apartment and office buildings.
At South Bank, a few buildings of the old TAFE are currently being knocked down as they’ve been replaced with brand new multi storey buildings.
At New Farm, an old heritage listed apartment block was recently partly demolished due to a loop hole in dates surrounding development approval and heritage listing date. Although I don’t think it’s right, I do think the media has sensationalised it a bit too much.
I’m all for retaining heritage but resource utilization and environmental impact concern me more. A lot of energy (trucks, cranes, drills) and resources (concrete, steel, wood) are used to create a building and so to knock one down and build an entirely new building on the same land is pretty wasteful. I’ve noticed that one of the old car parks in Albert Street is having an extension built on top of it which is a slightly better outcome than knocking it down completely and starting again.
I also love it when some one says No to The Man and refuses to sell out. Edice Macefield was one of these people. This picture of her house makes me smile but also makes me feel a little bit sick.
Click to enlarge.
Picture is by Docutorial (Creative Commons).
I agree that heritage listings have gone too far and the media are being manipulated by one-eyed heritage fanatics whose only concern is their heritage hobby. The media reports about the perfectly legal demolition of the New Farm building is merely the latest example. The owners had a perfeclty legal demolition consent. Heritage fanatics heritage listed it after this demolition consent was granted, no doubt in order to try and pressure the owners into doing what they wanted. The problem with a lot of heritage groups these days is that are no longer about genuine heritage, but have become an anti-development lobby. The reason city buildings are being demolished and replaced with apartmwents is because people needs places to live and not all of us what the full suburban nightmare of lawn mowing, car pooling the kids and being a slave to property maintenance on our days off work. As for these “stranded” or orphaned original buildings like Macefield’s – we have had similar hold outs in NSW CBD areas as on every occasion I am aware of, once the usually elderly owner dies, their heirs sell out the to highest bidder asap. Elderly owners should not be forced out against their will however I note that many such people live is almost derelict conditions in some of these houses as they were not built to modern standards and most have not had the money to afford renovations.