5: Architectural Outcomes

When conceiving possible architectural outcomes of our future scenario, our group reverted back to our four characters, understanding what they do on a daily basis and how the architecture within Brisbane would need to react or adapt to suit the new lifestyles maintained within the city. As we each developed our own characters, we also delved our own architectural outcomes, ensuring that each proposal works harmoniously with the others, as well as fits within our new Brisbane masterplan.

Parker James Savill: as the International Liaison Officer in Brisbane, I realised that Parker will need a place from which to ‘liaise’ from – a place that acted as a poster-child for the success of the new Brisbane. It must be confident and powerful, whilst also remaining humble and respectful. It must provide a place for companies to meet with one another and discuss the running of the city, as well as be able to facilitate visiting corporate members, reassuring them that their investments are secure and beneficial. It must therefore speak to the people (your city is in safe hands) as well as to the corporations (your money is in safe hands), whilst also being a pleasant environment to work in (Parker is used to a very high standard of living). This means that Brisbane needs a new corporate headquarters.

Parker’s corporate headquarters ties in nicely with Stephen’s multi-media hub (a place where you can gain access to a plethora of resources, and test out the latest technologies), as the media hub acts as a display home for the “Big 5”’s successes. These buildings will therefore be located adjacent to each other, with the corporate headquarters taking over the current Chifley Hotel, and the media-hub utilizing the corner location of the St George Bank.

Fraya’s nightlife and Carol’s multi-purpose residential building programs are located further away from these sites, at the corner of George and Albert Street, and 179 Elizabeth St respectively, but still tie in with the corporation’s desire for a positive representation within the city that facilitates engagement with its people.

sketches of proposed sites
top left: Hungry Jacks, corner of Albert and Queen St (proposed nightlife)
bottom left: 179 Elizabeth St (proposed multi-purpose residential)
right: St George Bank and Chifley Hotel, corner of George and Queen St (proposed multi-media hub and corporate headquarters respectively) 

The fabric of the Brisbane will also change and adapt to suit the future, primarily in allowing for a more pedestrian consumer lifestyle (pedestrianising inner city streets?), as well as increase public transport, and trying to figure out what to do with abandoned mining offices and carparks (completely remove cars from the city?). We did a quick mapping exercise to see how that would work:

inner city map showing transportation pathways - a metro system passing through to QUT (orange dash); multiple bus stops around perimeter of inner city (purple); purely pedestrianised streets (light blue), cycle ways (green); and no car access in inner city except for deliveries (dark blue).

locations of mining companies (pink), government buildings (blue) and carparks (yellow), which will have to be reprogrammed in our future scenario.