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March 12, 2009
This is a new building in Gouger Street in the CBD of Adelaide. It's classic modernism done in 2008-9, and it shows the staying power of modernism as a style of corporate architecture. Modernism still rules for the corporate world it says. Neo-modernism still stands for the deconstruction of urban complexity.
Not quite. When the post-war economic boom faded during the 1970s and many metropolitan areas experienced stagnation, if not decline in population, there was a simultaneous reinvigoration of interest in urban centers resulted from the transition to a post- industrial economy and the emergence of social groups more attracted to inner urban, rather than suburban, amenities. Not so in Adelaide. That happened 30 years latter.
According to Jan Scheurer in this article that the urban district is mono-functional, either: accommodating commercial or industrial or recreational uses but seldom a mix of more than one. The streetscape is determined by the function of movement while its historic role as a meeting place is pushed aside... The building, formerly designed with ersatility in mind to facilitate changes in usage over time, is now perfected to fit its original purpose but often poorly equipped to accommodate another should future necessities demand this.
The CBDs have commonly tended towards retail- and office-dominated monocultures during the modernist era and the level of public life was not seen as the lifeblood of the urban environment. Consequently, the strengthening of the residential component in the CBD represents a movement away from the modernist city.
This more compact city, with its improved conditions for walking and cycling and the concentration of uses around public transport, is in conflict with the political and cultural acceptance of the dominance of auto mobility, car ownership and traffic flows.
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