Where is the Centre?
If we can bring ourselves to put aside our idea of the Sunshine Coast as a great swathe of unsullied beach reaching from Caloundra to Double Island Point, and envisage it, rather, as a City of some 390 000 souls*, then where might we imagine its centre to be? Where would we find its heart? Could it be Hastings Street, Noosa? Bulcock Street, Caloundra? I’m not being utterly facetious: Is it really Sunshine Plaza?
Now, I know you’re probably asking why we need to have a centre at all. Why can we not simply leave the Sunshine Coast defined by its beaches and its hinterland, its laid-back, quintessentially Queensland atmosphere?
I think the answer lies in the size of its urban footprint. No matter how we like to think of ourselves, we are no longer living in beach shacks, surfing the break off Point Cartwright or Granite Bay. The Sunshine Coast is fast becoming an extended and somewhat amorphous mass, almost a hundred kilometres in length, a conglomerate of hastily built shopping centres and suburbs, punctuated by vast industrial areas, a place not defined by its natural values, but one in which these values are squeezed in between the built environment.
I would like to argue that we require, amongst all this, some public expression of what it is that we, the people who inhabit this area, aspire to. We need some sort of public architecture.
Now, public architecture is expensive, it is often contentious, but it serves important roles. Primarily it sets the bar for everything else. At the moment the standard for what we expect from a building in these parts is determined not by what is possible, not by how beautiful, elegant and practical a building can be, but by how cheaply and quickly it can be erected, and for how much we can sell it on to the next unsuspecting wave of arrivals.
Our public schools are akin to demountables, our community halls like aircraft hangers, our bus-stations … oh God, our bus stations … think of the great rail stations of the world, Waterloo, the Gare du Nord, even Central Station in Sydney. Recall how it was to step into one of these places, that sense of having arrived somewhere. Compare that, if you will, to the bus shelter in the underground carpark at Sunshine Plaza.
Public architecture has the capacity to change the way we feel about ourselves. Bilbao is a classic example: Before the Guggenheim came to that city it was utterly demoralised, devastated by thirty years of virtual civil war. The construction of the art gallery transformed the place, single-handedly giving the citizens a reason to feel proud, and turning the city into a tourist mecca, bringing untold wealth and prestige to the whole region.
We don’t necessarily need to go that far here, but it is worth considering what a show of civic pride might do for ourselves and our children, what a demonstration of the common wealth might achieve.
Several years ago a disastrous choice was made – to build Sunshine Coast University out in a paddock instead of in the centre of Maroochydore. It was a decision made for those same sad, lame, awful reasons they’re always made: land was cheap and someone could make a dollar by putting it at Sippy Downs.
We’re faced with a similar problem/opportunity today: where will we put our new combined Regional Council? Will we be courageous enough to consider a building that gives definition to this new city of ours, with a square attached that includes an arts precinct that celebrates who we are, the whole thing placed somewhere in the thick of things? Instead of more tilt-up concrete bunkers, can we dare to imagine something that lifts our hearts and souls?
*Planned population for 2010 according to the SEQ Regional Plan.
Hanrahan
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