February 28, 2025 • 62 mins
Michael Gloster, discusses the 40-year history of the brilliant Noosa Council in shaping the iconic Noosa coastal district, on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
Anyone who is passionate about the coastal environment and human settlement planning, can be enriched by this world-leading urban and regional parks development story.
Michael Gloster, author of 'The Shaping of Noosa', is an architect, urban designer and policy planner.
Anyone who is passionate about the coastal environment and human settlement planning, can be enriched by this world-leading urban and regional parks development story.
Michael Gloster, author of 'The Shaping of Noosa', is an architect, urban designer and policy planner.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi, Local Architecture. Now for October, we're speaking with Michael
Gloucester from NUSA.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
How are you, Michael, really well speaking with you.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It's wonderful to be speaking with you. Thank you so
much for joining us. We'll mention the word NUSA just
to pull the audience in. I'm sure people have various
triggers when they think of NUSA, but we're lucky to
have Michael, who's been a resident for decades and has
been key part of the integral group in establishing NUSA
for what it is. So what are we going to
(00:41):
talk about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, I'd love to talk about how NURSA has become
what it is over the last forty years, checking with
an emphasis on environmental protection and architectal and town planning
guidance and so on. And if we've got time to
(01:03):
talk a little bit about what the future might hold.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It sounds wonderful. I got so interested in NUSA I
think back in two thousand and nine. I was a
later doptor of the town. I went there for the
first time in two thousand and nine and fell head
over and heels in love with it after having been
almost in tears having gone to surf for about a
week earlier, and at the end of my stay, I
(01:25):
took a first trip around one of your beautiful national
parks on the peninsula there and arrived at the infosector
and a couple of enthusiastic volunteers at the desk who
were Kiwi's got me to buy the book, The Shaping
of NUSA, which was written by you, Michael Gloucester. And
it's a beautiful book and every way graphically but also
(01:46):
as a narrative in a story and a history. So
wonderful all these years later that you're able to join us.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
That book was written when we just made enough progress
to have confidence we maybe or to make news a
bit special. And since then, what's twenty five years ago
when that was written, Since then, we've faced many further calendars,
We've had many significant wins, and we're taking a few hits.
(02:14):
So let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Let's talk about it. That seems to be the character
of the book, the hits and the winds. You were saying,
this is timely. I didn't quite gather the information, but
it's the final gazetting, Is that correct? Of the last
national park?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yes? Well, well, some forty years ago a number of colleges,
and I faced up to the brutal reality that Musa
is such a beautiful place foc esthetically and climate wise,
but it was always going to be under relentless development pressure.
(02:54):
Particularly it's situated at the northern end of the Sunshine
sorry Sunshine exactas Queensland, which is really one of the
most significant growth areas in Australia generally. So forty years
ago we set big targets, big dreams on how we're
going to try to protect the physical environment, the natural environment,
(03:15):
both well just from an esthetical beauty perspective, but as
importantly from an ecological conservation perspective. But at the same
time we wanted to do it in a way where
we'd end up with a human settlement pattern which was
a lifeful and exit lightly within that landscape. So when
(03:36):
I wrote that book twenty five years ago, we're about
halfway through that, a bit more than it, a bit
less than halfway through what's turned out to be a
parting year journey where we now finally have conserved perpetually
as national path for most significant landscapes and seascapes, and
(04:00):
we've made very good progress in getting a build environments
within that, but we are now. But the more successful
we are, and this is the paradox, but the more
successful we've been in doing that, the more attractive we've been.
Or but come to everybody wanting to get a footholding
(04:23):
and develop a hell out of the place, and or
coming in the love the place. But there's so many
people coming and loving the place which being loved for that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I did notice that when I returned, probably ten years later,
I thought that Nissau was basically unable to be kind
of detracted from. I thought the planning, and I thought
the ecology, and I thought the geography and the wonderful
architecture and urban escape had managed to safeguard itself against
(04:53):
any future kind of upheavals. But I did notice an
abundance of cars from outside as day trippers seemed to
a little more dusty because of that. Even then, there
were no sense of awful car parks. Even though there
were a lot of cars. There was still a sense
of the cars being nudged in in green areas alongside
trade environments. So it was still very successful even then.
(05:15):
Sort of aesthetically, yes, well, but.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
There's no doubt that over time the sense of place,
particularly in your urban environment or suburban environments on the
coast and zone. It's bacteriating and it will continue to deteria.
I think what weent is that we can perpetually conserve
(05:38):
half the lanscope. When you're up to half of the
shire it's now national park. We visited it was about
ten or fifteen percent, So there's been real progress in
protecting the overall field of the of the region. Like
(05:59):
even if you're driving increasingly crowded roads, you've almost always
got it on one side of another a chunk of
national path or a river escape or a sea scape
for work. But people continue to come and where we're
(06:21):
working on managing that better. However, a lot of the
ability to manage tourism in a way where lends with
local lifestyles and doesn't overly impact on the physical environment,
a lot of those leaders are controlled by the state
(06:43):
government and the State of Queensland, and they're not particularly
sympathetic to us trying to manage a tourism based economy
in a way where can people for both visit and
residents both tend to take on one size fits all,
(07:06):
and across Swingsland, the predominant ethos is still hit before
the maximum surgeons growth.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I think the success of NUSA was that you understood
design from the get go. I mean yourself was an architect,
urban designer. I believe your wife was a landscape architect.
So you had design at the beginning, around the table,
you know, part of the whole policy planning, decision making
in all of that. But I'm finding in New Zealand
(07:37):
as well, design isn't around the table at this policy
level of local or regional or state government.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So design.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Thinking enabled the success of NUSA across ecology, across geography.
But without that design thinking in today's generational approach, maybe
that's where the the decision making or the problem solving
is not achieved.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well, yes, but the state of differently, like in Australia,
you know we've got three levels of government. In unfortunate
two we haven't been able to get close to the
same type of integrated thinking between shaping your natural environmental
(08:27):
defection of it and shaping town planning and shaping the
environment and so on. We're able to do that at
the Mursi level Mane through relentless hard work of getting
successful merse accountils elected who are sympathetic to that view,
but we haven't been able to persuade the state government
(08:50):
to approach it in the same integrative way. And I
hold the most important leavers now that need to be
pulled in order to be able to run an economy
local economy where you know, it's very very supportive of tourism,
(09:14):
supportive of tourism in a way where numbers are managed
so that at any one time visitors have a delightful
experience as the localist rather than it has been a zero.
But we also know there's nowhere around Australia that's achieved
that level of integration. So the upside for us is
(09:35):
we'd argue we're way ahead of the pack compared to
most areas, and it's under real pressure from popular browken song,
but we haven't been able to crack through where we
can really manage our tourism economy in the way we
want it and we're do internally.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, do you think it's a generational moment. I mean
the moment when NUSSA, you all came together at NUSA
and as you said, it still on the shoulders of
the classic conservationist of the fifties in that region, there
was a moment of sort of intellectual or or age
or related or sort of informed disciplinary approach to things.
(10:24):
And it happened that way in terms of a collaborative approach.
But is it a generational shift, I mean, we just
haven't quite got that collective thought going now or is
it the fact that it's a larger state related.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yes, it's not job, it's not generational. It's let's describe
those three ways you referred to a classic conservation you're
the fifties. That actually started in the sixties. But for
the first twenty years, the leaders of the nurser Ark
(11:02):
of safe At which is the local conservation group which
I've been leading to the last forty years. But the
first twenty years the leaders were very very well trained
natural scientists, and they were able to lobby directly to
(11:23):
the state government to get large chunks of land further
northern mers protected as national path. But most of that
land wasn't contested by any of the local people or
the economy. That land was contested by international sand miners
(11:45):
or national castal companies and so on, And so that
first generation was able to have their battle with those
fastal interests and the sand mining interests and the logging interests.
They were to do that by engaging with well basically literate,
(12:06):
scientifically literate bureaucrats in the Queensland bureaucracy in prison. Most
of much battles didn't really leak out into the public.
But by the nineteen eighties when I got involved and
the leader of that first era he visited in wits End,
(12:27):
was that modeluld run into a brick wall because close
to the nurser all the land that was important was
already under lease sold to private interests. Anything was freeholding.
It was more or less impossible there again, but there
was large, large development leasels. But that meant we had to.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Change our tactics completely and become intimately involved and finally
to influence as much as we could local government and
its ability to town plan and so town planning and
(13:11):
having a majority of our members on news a council
over many years became.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Our key leader. More recently that approach has hit the
brick wall. Just as the first wave hit the brick
ball in in the eight is now in the twoenty
twenties you're getting far greater stating the bench coming in
(13:39):
and writing over the top of local government generally and
Bleenson and that's driven well, it's half driven by developer greed,
a loving in state level that's always been there. The
other thing is that the housing crisis post COVID nationally
and the state as caused both for beds and the
(14:03):
state and all the states for that country to override
local councils. And that's that's the movement where the Pencer
movement we're in at the moment, and we just still
find our way through it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That's interesting direct parallels with Hair and our hair on
New Zealand and our little council as well understanding urban
design and geography. I'm living in a coastal region like
yours in a way where the physical geography is so
dominant and wonderful, but then we have this housing kind
of focus as well, So that very interesting. I mean,
(14:42):
our council are having to work both in the community
and cognizant of what the national prescription is currently HM.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yes, So locally we've had to rethink and recalibrate what
we regard as an acceptable print form or settlement in
order to accommodate greater social housing, afford the houses for work.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So what's the crux of that right now then, I
mean for me as an architect, I just adored the
looser architectural landscape back in two thousand and nine. But
now you've got to re calibrate. I mean, how do
you how does that text the brain and the communication skills.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, you see, because we've been so successful in controlling
the development book and by that I mean in nineteen
sixty two one percent mercershis national park, in nineteen eighty
to ten percent, and now today something like forty four percent,
(15:57):
So we're dramatically contract the area that can actually be developed.
And at the same time, like twenty years ago when
you came to Mercery, were already had in a very
very type type limit. And the whole philosophy was if
we could control the footprint by reducing it progressively reducing it,
(16:20):
getting it potentially said its national path, and you could
control high now high rise nothing over three stories, you'd
basically be controlling the population, but the population size. So
everyone was designed around that. So the built environment you
(16:43):
saw was low scale and sacked well within the landscape.
So that's worked for twenty years, but it's under challenge
now from a back a minute, But what we didn't
anticipate was relentless growth of day trippers and which and
(17:03):
that changed in COVID because we got smashed during COVID
by day trippers, and that's set up a new path
of day trippers. And the other will we sort of
half the sort that we thought we'd be upper managerment.
What we didn't see coming was the relentless rise of
(17:27):
Airbnb and stays inside. So we've now got a large
parts at the top end of the market in terms
of real estate where there used to be our own
by wealthy families and they'd come up perhaps three or
(17:47):
four weeks of the year and the rest of the
time the places would be vacant. Now there it's like
street up the street of small mini hotel which are
short stay erects, and so that's that's increased the number
of people and the number of cars in nursing year round,
(18:11):
so that these are structural shifts, but the changes in
town planning settings, changes with Airbnb, the changes in increased
number of day trippers. Finding this is from a region
in a southeast Queensland where nurse is still the most
(18:31):
beautiful place to go that you can get to within
an hour half strive. These are things that are cause
in your changes. It's not a generational problem with who's
in those are trying to look after it. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
It's interesting because you're you've had like success and now
you're trying to deal with the outcome of that, Whereas
in our coastal area we're still like a baby. We're
still just a beach side reserve with no real understanding
of planning whatsoever to manage human settlement within a beautiful geography.
(19:09):
So we're coming from it like naively, whereas you're coming
and the same problems with housing and and But I
think our attitude is that we want to increase tourism,
perhaps hopefully appropriately, and maybe there are some lessons from
your past that you can teach us, but you're struggling
with the present from from the other point of view,
(19:30):
have having been very successful, yes.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Well it's I think it's a paradox the world over.
But the more attractive a place becomes, or the more
attractive and mature place being compared to surrounding areas, the
more you're going to get ham it unless you work
out how to manage against getting hammered.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
You've got to have the tools that you disposed. If
you car through that, then you've really got to start
playing a political and policy game at a much file
level of government or governments. For example. In my view,
(20:19):
the only way news is going to get out of
its current anund them is when it can persuade state
governments of either political persuasion, but it's in the state
economic interest to perceived differently from most areas in the state.
And that really means where go argue, let us manage
(20:43):
this place, where we will manage it where it's a
delightful place to visit and to live. But guess what,
not everybody can visit At the same time, we're going
to have to manage numbers by time, which really will
(21:04):
end up looking like if we're successful, a booking system
where if you wake up in the morning in Brisbane
and you've decide to want to take a day trip
up to nurser rather than taking their gamble, which is
what people do at the moment, they jump in their
car and then an hour and a half later they
find out where they can get a car park, or
(21:25):
they can get near to thee to the national park
they want to visit, or whether it's just a grid life.
We've got a merger stage and where the state government
works with us to allow us to set up really
a booking system where you say I want to go
to I want to take drive up and take the
(21:45):
family to Mercer next burst, and the answer comes back, sorry,
no slots available, but why don't could drive a following
Tuesdale that type of approach, So it's a bit like
it's stretching. It's a metaphor, but it's a bit like
running a popular restaurant where people have to book and
(22:07):
finally there's limits to the sitting time, so you know
you can book from as you know. Now if you
want to get into a really good popular restaurant, not
only got a book, but you've got to accept to
our slot. Well, I think Moose is going to have
to manage its dissipation that way or the only other model,
(22:32):
which is to just use price, use prices, but that
way you end up tapering to a clientele it's just
the rich and nobody. Shouldn't say nobody, but Musa generally
doesn't want to be a en flavor where only the
super rich can afford to this. The only two leaders
(22:54):
either price or booking by time.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
There's one ultimate approach that all places become like NUSA.
You know that they if all places could have that
quality understanding of place that nusa's original brief seem to
have been to actually give yourself a sort of plan
in the future. If they could break down this whole.
I mean, this is not going to happen, but if
(23:19):
there could be more, if there could be other places
which respect geography and environment and human settlement, then it
wouldn't all just be NUSA is the place you've got
to go. But that requires state level understanding of design
and urban design thinking.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yes, and we don't see any evidence of that.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I mean in the profession, as you know, all over
the world we're talking about we're starting to discuss it's
become almost not a cliche but a lovely term identity
of place, place making, creating place. And as designers, we
don't just say that as a sort of an airy
fairy nice thing. We see it as an It has
economic value. It's an economy of people, people thriving because
(24:05):
they want to be in that place. And if that
idea as a sort of as a sort of an
architectural idea can start to gain some sort of colloquialism
within politics, they will say that economics isn't just like
you know, get the big keynote, tenant holder, blockbuster firms
(24:27):
into that place, and then we'll build something around it.
If they could recognize that the key thing is that
people want to come to a place and NUSS is
an outstanding reason because of your huge population problems you've got,
maybe in twenty years time, you know that politics will
change around what tourism economics is all about, and then
(24:47):
it could be more of an evenly distributed series of
places that people want to either live in permanently and
start to sort of galvanize the way that they manage
their places with support of government to do so and
from a resident bottom up approach and a government understanding
of what the residents are trying to achieve. I mean,
(25:09):
that's that's the theory for the future.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It's a nice theory. Attach a course is if you
if if there's a mistake made on the journey to
achieving a top vision you're talking about, you can't reverse No,
(25:34):
you can reverse it somewhat, but it's an enormous sept.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So we were just the session we had before yours
was with Afdalazez, who was the director of a film
called The Genius of the Place, which was about the
life and times of Jeffrey Bauer, an architect in Sri Lanka.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
And I know this work and I would have loved
to match.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, well, the film was wonderful. If you it's easily
available The Genius of the Place. But I said, well,
why from looking at the movie and these beautiful drone shots,
it's such an extraordinary beautiful place. Why is there such
an extensive amount of jungle and green and lakes. And
he said, well, ninety percent of Sri Lanka is unbuilt
(26:26):
on and that is because they had thirty years civil war,
so nobody went there. And he was saying, you know,
why does you know think? Okay, well, Sri Lanka. Now
he's inviting. The movie was about increasing tourism to to
invite people to visit Sri lank and you think, oh
my gosh, it will be just like every other expanse
of Asian city, you know, Bangkok and so forth. And
(26:48):
we ended the conversation saying, well, why does it have
to be you know, surely doesn't have to go the
way of every other Asian hotspot. But you know, as
you say, if you make one mistake, you're heading down
that track like a dragonnaut.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Where on our local A b C network, there's been
a program showing in the last over the last week
of what's happening in Valley, just a whole spale on
score of the overdevelopment on the coastal stript And and
(27:25):
of course it's happening because one it's an attractive place,
and two there's no real regulation or planning regulation or regime,
it stops. And so if you don't have a regulation
in place, or and we knew forty years ago that
(27:50):
there was seen town planning. We knew that every town
plan that's normally prepared has a future development and they've
got green cords, which I pretend they're going to be
there forever. But you go back and look at the
plan ten or fifteen minutes later, and the green belts
(28:11):
have become future development corridors and may become suburbs. And
so you've got to perpetually protect your green quickly. You've
got to get in way ahead of the inevitable pressures
that are coming towards you. And I see that happening
(28:32):
very very rarely. I can't, but I can't see it
happening in three land. Well, who's going to bring close
a national estate set of planning restrictions to preserve those
lives natural results?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yes, exactly. I mean the film will be a bit
like Nuser. It shows such a delightfully beautiful place, it
will attract so many people and then it's under threat.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Well, you see, the insidious step is not the attacking them,
the people that that happens, but the the developers and
the speculators are relentlessly coming over the whole landscape looking
(29:28):
for where they can get in and basically development.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I totally agree with you so, and.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
You know it probably happened to you when I went
through architecture, when I went through town planning and environmental planning.
Within my student totals at my colleagues roughly path end
up becoming based in serv of the development industry. And
(30:03):
some of them are very very clever, and so the
development side is far better organized and better equipped and
better resource ah than in the sort of community of
the community trying to protect. Yeah, and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
More motivated, but they're not very clever. I mean that
they're smart, they can do it. They they know, they've
got the capacity to green field, you know whatever for
whatever development that they're keyed in for. That that's there,
but it's a very narrow They're successful because they have
very narrow fields of vision, so they don't ask the
questions and they don't have the problem. They can just
(30:45):
do it. And because they're so quick off the mark,
the councilors well locally anyway, they just you know, nod
to them and say, you know, they have absolutely no
real barriers to proceeding from within out within council because
they've got all the equipment. They're up and going, and
they there can do a bunch of people correct all that.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
And in LUSA we're basically had the better of them
for sixty years.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Wow, there's because of the broader trends and the concerns
for housing and so on. Well, they and their lobbyists
and their professional associations inside have far more influence into
government policy than than the traditional conservation movement, of the
(31:38):
traditional beautiful movement and so on.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I mean, we're hearing a few voices apparently in the
latest news there an architect magazine that the organ of
the Institute god Old Pip Chiesshire apparently has saying that
the institute and the architects need to have much more
a voice. We need to be much more out there
in an act of a sense, and you know, the
the idea that we need to have, and I know
that Australia is ahead of New Zealand. We need to
(32:04):
have government architects in place. We need to have architects
and designers within these government fields so that this concept
of place and building and people has a real economic
validity rather than just we've got to get this thing
(32:24):
done and we need a digger, you know, which is
what happens here and before you know it, within a day,
precious little micro cosms are lost because some and to me,
you know, it's hard because a lot of these development
it's sort of a virtual signing approach. They call it
tidying up. They feel almost virtuous that they're tidying up
(32:45):
this useless, vacant piece of land and they have this
sort of power, this kind of oh, you know, we're
doing a good job. We're tiding it up pretty quickly
for you.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yes, And I do believe that local community awareness and
the termination and vision and so on. If it's if
it's well developed and in trench it can match that
most of the time.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, that's good. I mean, you guys did.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Well. We did, and I'm still hopeful we still can't.
Although the built environment will not be the resultant built
environment will not be as attractive as for one new
visited twenty five years ago. But see, I'd argue, I
(33:45):
don't think you can walk into many places on reserve
where the building environment is a skimness scale and as
person as it was twenty five years ago. Most you
to one way threat.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
What's our profession for if we can't activate it? I mean,
you know, we can't practice it in the way that
we believe. I mean, let's just say like that the
crux of this green field approach, which here is rampant
in the coast, we've got masses of They still think
this because it's less developed than Wellington, the capital city,
and our down the road. They think, you know, they
can there's more land to develop, so it just gets
(34:24):
developed and badly. I mean, the resulting human settlement style
is just these awfully badly designed little suburbs that are
a complete waste of the available land resource that they
had available to them at the start, so this is happening.
But then I'm just across from where I'm talking to you,
just the next block over, but opposite the little railway station.
(34:45):
We've got this bit of land. We might call it
a brownfield site, and we've got the council to buy it.
Because housing is on everybody, you know, it's so forefront,
and they light the idea of medium dencity housing along
transport routes. This site was ideal and backs onto a
very declining small shopping center which needs violency. So so the
(35:08):
idea long term is appropriate kinds of housing but in
a community ultimately great community hub side of sense. So
in the short term we're going to have this little
small community hub, little sort of pavilions to get activation
and engagement, temporary kind of approach. And this site had
a little old house on it which had to be demolished,
which was fine because it was you know, asbestodrin, and
(35:32):
beside it for years had been an empty section grassed
with wildflowers and all sorts of things on it. So
it was a two lot site and we were going
to build the thing on the gravel, on the demolished
hard surface, and then we're going to intervene little sort
of seatings and little bits and pieces on the green site. Right,
that was the brief even from council. And there was
little wildflowers and we're going we're going to sort of
(35:54):
multiply these wildflowers, so we're going to intervene on what
was already there. It was a memory for people. There
were shop shop SOPs and for years there was an
empty space of green and the people who had been
tenanting the house, they'd put sculptures in there for sale.
So that was all good, you know, and we designed
something up. And then I walked past the other day
and the good old project managers that have been you
know commissioned, you know, they've just gone and leveled the
(36:16):
whole site. I mean it's easy for them. It's a
small site. We've got the digger on my mouths will
take the whole lot out. I mean, it's it's a
five second decision between someone in council and the developer
who's going to making it easy for everybody. But now
we're starting. You know, they've taken all the topsoil off
and they've dumped it beside, you know, the site. So
we've now got to reput this topsail back on. That's
(36:38):
like probably no two days work, you know, at a
cost that didn't need to happen. And so that's a tiny,
tiny example of it's so much easier just to level
the whole site. We've got the digger on site, let's
do it. That is minute, but it has a huge
you know, and it's happening on a much greater scale elsewhere,
and you know, we speak to the counts. He thought, Oh,
it was just easier to do that. It makes me
(37:01):
angry because I'm I'm dealing with it in a small
way seeing it all around me.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
You know, it's not easy being an architect. Essentially, it's
a powerless profession. But by that I mean most of
the time architects have to bend in. They have to
the person playing the suing.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, and we're polite people. We believe in communication and
working with a political awareness, but working together and because
we're used to responding clearly to clients and communicating with clients,
so we do this at the political level as well.
But it's a it's a it's an unusual, unusual approach,
(37:48):
I think when they're not used to that sort of well,
it's interdisciplinary approach.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Of a ways found it point but particularly h in effective.
You see in Nurse of What we put together a
couple of us that were architects and found plans and
there was one person's or lawyer, and there's one person's aunt.
But it was cold blood of me to take over
(38:19):
the council for at least a generation and to pull
the leaders of power. There weren't too many discussions that
hobboard over the detail of how great paid Little Square
Urban Square could have done. It wasn't time for that.
M hm. Like I think you were either you've got
(38:42):
to immerse yourself in the front line where power is
paying itself out, and you can do that as an activist,
but often in effective. All you you've somehow got to
crack the power block and become become.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Venus that Well, that's the story of NUSSA and that's rare.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yes, I agree, and like it's one of the people
that have been involved in that. There's a fair amount
of scorn that comes from sections of the campaigning profession,
architectural profession, and conservation movements. So I also only guys
have solved out.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Because I think there's a lot of particularly when you
train as an architect, and that was my first dere
you train in a way where you're not aware at
the time, but you really are being trained to be
self righteous because you're you're trained, but you've got to
it's your responsibility to work out what's an appropriate balance
(39:57):
and integration of the diverse at a sign better it
implicitly you've been trying to be a demi god and
then they get it out there that's not the way
they work. Offer.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
There was an architect mayor in a city in Brazil,
was it? They had an architect mayor in a town
in Brazil, and he introduced all sorts of incredible policies.
I can't remember the name of it now, Like you know,
I think I don't know if you were the mayor or.
(40:40):
I think you may have been. But you know, if
we can get that those designers and those positions of power,
as you say, it goes an incredibly long way into
establishing several decades of of intelligent planning.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Well, I agree. It would be better still to get
regional scale landscape architect regional scale planners that were really
interested and integration of conservation and sentiment and so on
(41:17):
and like architects can do it too, but I don't
think that's the first professional pool to try to improve.
If you're really trying to put together an idea of
a local government must have.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
The trouble with with with the other the policy and
the planners, and I still need someone to design it.
I mean, yours obviously worked because you understood. You actually
pushed through policy and planning to secure NUS's national parks.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And also we also gave privileged treatment to talented visionary architects.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
So that's where it's at. You see, you need you
need the people to be able to design and achieve
built form as well, and that tends to get lost
if architects aren't enough sufficiently in the in the around
that table, because you can have as much because as
soon as you get into planning and so far you've
got so many reports, you've got so many people that
(42:24):
have to have an opinion, but you still have to
be able to produce a building, and so design has
to be in there, and I think that gets lost.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yes, well, let's go back to your example Jeffrey Baa.
I haven't seen the film, I've read his books. The
way he talks about walking onto a site and there's
a large site for something larger touris and developments, and
(42:54):
so he he had that ability to see large sites
and buildings nestled within those sites and when it when
it was appropriate to modify the site, like he quite
willfully modified the photography of sites, but not the whole site.
(43:15):
But the end result was a wonderful foreman and landscape.
But I'd argue that he had an ability to design
at a scale which a number of artifictures got but
many haven't. It's because it's much bigger. He was paying
at a bigger scale.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
H Was it because he had the because of the
Civil War he had more room? Who knows? He had
more room because he could be more experimental because there
was no sort of formal.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Well force, partly that and partly he had a highly
unusual education, like he was a product of the AI
Architecture of Association in London, which was far more of
an apprenticeship. And he also came from well basically aristocratic roots. Yeah,
(44:13):
and so I imagine him as a very talented if you
met him, a very very talented visual and stacial designer.
We've got both filk former and environment, but who also
was imperiods. Yeah, he saw himself a bit like a
(44:35):
conductor of a symphony orchestra sans he was orchestrating the
big picture and a whole lot of basically workers only.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, I guess it is fraight Lloyd Wright of this
of the same milk.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Well, yes, and when you look at his settlements out
in the desert and sign he was definitely able and
very comfortable and very talented in designing at a landscape level,
not a block level.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
But I don't know who are the heroes in New Zealand.
Who are the heroes in Australia? But are operating in
that scale? And I think the answer comes back not many,
simply because there's so rarely an opportunity. There's so really
a brief shows up at scale.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
I mean our architects doing it in China and in
the Middle East. You know that the British architects who
get these big jobs or is that more sort of
business marketing kind of you know, get the building and
compete with everybody else on the world stage.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
I'm not sure, but I don't see I find a
lot of the modern city news. I just find them
astonishing architectural things, but I don't see too much evidence
of a balanced nature.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah. Yeah, we were speaking to an architect, a Kiwi
guy who practices in Paris, who's working on a university
outside of Cairo, and we were discussing, you know, the
geography of the desert and what you work with in
that sense, you know, a desert sort of environment, shadow
and sun and things like that. So he was he
(46:31):
was thinking it through as we were speaking. In some ways. Yeah,
for the listeners, would you be interested in doing a
little bit of a reminiscent sort of retrospect of the
look of NUSA Township. I mean, you know, I mean
as a community urban space design experience, a street level
experience for the average public person. It was successful, and
(46:54):
you knew the sea was just over there, but you
were actually shopping and shopping in a retail precinct. And
the two saying, the two of them, we're not in conflict.
Is there any sort of like descriptive comments you might
like to make about the you know, the traditional NUSA
urban experience just sort of visually.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Well, sometimes sometimes I imagine the whole thing imagining on
a bird that can just yea fly five high enough
to see what happened and going on. Or let's say
you're a hang glider, but the first thing you know
(47:38):
is at that level is there's continuous spirits, a large
slaves of National Path, or it's just streend stuff, but
it happens protective now Perpetual's National Path which runs right
through the middle of the shire and raps around a
(48:01):
whole lot of small, small coastal communities and so on.
And if you've then come down to and none of
the buildings are high for buildings ness in the landscape,
if you come down to Ben Rover and you're on
a bike or you're driving a car, you're very rarely
(48:25):
more than a few minutes going through a road escape
or a street scape where there's not a natural vista
on one side. So it's either ocean or beach, or
river or green and the greens either National Park or
the tech space. So if you're living in any of
(48:46):
those subjects right through the shire, you're within a few
minutes walk of either green or river or coast beach
except except in other words, there's no large waves of
suburbia and it was designed very consciously with that from
(49:14):
the get go. Bearing in mind when we showed up
sixteen years ago, there was a road pattern and there
was a village established village patterns. So for all that's
been reinforced in a way where it didn't just explode
into continuous suburbia.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
So you could see the original village pattern and you
kind of responded to that kind of visual memory and
and and involved from from something like that, but also
with some controls around development.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Well, basically you surround every one of those villages original
village by national Yeah. To move from one to another,
you have to drive through a natural path or you
have to drive along a beach reserve.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Yeah, So so that that was always an intent too,
realizing that those villages would be transformed dramatically other time.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Like if you brought back to somebody that was living
in those villages sixty years ago and you showed from
what's there now they shop, but there's still human scale
aggregations of settlement which are separated from the next aggregation
by a green belt national park at the Petro National
(50:48):
Petrol but the green between them now chan't be developed.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah. Did it happen naturally or was it part of
your kind of triggering policy that the artists and the
cultural and the and the hospitality, you know, the creative
movers and shakers around the arts and the culture and
those sort of festivals. Was that just because people were
(51:16):
there and they were interested and they created those things.
And I think you guys as counselor supported that. I mean,
there's a life in those settlements, which is you know,
grew up from within those village urban places.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yes, well I did it sixteen years ago when when
therese facts are say they can to the start, there
were people moving into all those villages from mainly from Melbourne,
and well they migrated in and the reason was that
(51:54):
they were attracted places for and they were close to
the whole I really know start on beaches and prific
bushwarks and so on and so on. So early on
locals in each of those communities banued what they had.
Our challenge became and we were successful at it to
(52:16):
articulate that has a network of villages and we had
to ensure that the essence of the villages were protected.
But it wasn't preserving old village, which is why some
communities go it. Let's protect human scale, let's protect the
(52:41):
size of the footprint of the village. But within those
sort of broad parameters, there was nothing precious if people
wanted to knock down a nineteen twenty cottage and build
a contemporary home. Hm.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
We've never gone to Lage, so it's not like you
go to a little historic town.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
It's a vibrant Yes, And there might be one street
where there's still a row of old buildings which are
so nice that they're playing their own they're in the
modern economy because there building.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, and like the hostel, the y h a there
is in the most beautiful location is such a fantastic
building and it's just up from the main street, Hasting Street,
but it's still it's got the the memory for visitors
such as the youth traveler or whoever of the of
the Queenslander.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Mm hmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah. But you yeah, I think there was just this
sort of cultural explosion, wasn't there within it, like the
regular annual festivals of jazz and arts and so forth,
that was sort of nurtured.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Yeah, and that's still all there.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
I just noticed that the first time I went. You know,
you think you're going to NUSA, you're going to have
to buy an expensive dress. I walked into this gorgeous
dress shop and came up with two gorgeous things for
a song. You know that wasn't expensive. But I think
that's generally in Australia. You know, dresses are much cheaper
in Australia now in New Zealand because keep Australians like
to wear a dresses because it's hot weather. But you
know you can go to NUSA and come away and
(54:25):
not spend a lot of money. I think it may
have changed now.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Well, well all those really idiosyncratic, artistically driven batique fove
botiques and some that you would have seen ty five
years ago. I have the exist yeah. Now it's just
about all Chames you know save yeah, all all your
(54:51):
national trendy clothes chains.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Yeah, the chains yeah change.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
I have a place in these or a friend tis
even stop paying its own way. It's it's fair as
part of a national brand for that.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
And so people have come here the shop now they
could easily go to a range of communities around Australia
have exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
I think that's yeah, it's happened in New Zealand. I
mean small boutique retailers just don't can't, can't gain a
footing any further. I mean, it's it's it's a it's
a different thing, a different sort of urban experience for
for visitors, it's a shopping thing. It's yeah, it's it's
it's an issue when we as designers and assets want
(55:43):
to create place. I think it's a reframing of of
what these urban experience is going to be. And we're
over the big box. But that's all the offering predominantly
that's available.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
Yes, well, you see, I find it interesting. The architectural
trap is to try to design exactly what you bid wants.
Let's talk resident and the simplest foot and you do
that and inevitably, we're not inevitable, but nine times out
(56:21):
of ten the owner wants to move somewhere else or
like four person place goes on the market and the
next buyer is probably going to knuck around about house
affair did and in a place like Nursey, the good
chance I'm not at over and start again. So at
(56:47):
the individual house level, that doesn't matter all briefly, but
once you start trying to design settlement at a neighbor level,
a village level, or community level, yeah, it's very hard
(57:08):
to build the flexibility into that built form in a
way that it can be usefully readapted time and again.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Years.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Yeah, the patterns and use of changes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
I remember someone saying, right, someone writing about Tokyo, the
joy of Tokyo, that it's constantly been demolished and rebuilt,
and it sounded, you know, it didn't matter that it
was new and changing all the time. It was still
full of life. So maybe that's reality in the big city.
Speaker 3 (57:42):
Well yeah, and yet it doesn't sit well with net zero.
No exactly so, but we just had the example he
one of our most revered or most celebrated arts architect
called John Mainwaring. He ran he built a house, designed
(58:04):
a house for fine twenty five years ago and won
a raft of national awards. It was like by the
architecture is most stuff been built in those since then
become heavy and pondrous. But it was like the architecture
nationally awarded famous. It got pulled down last year. But
(58:30):
because it's in a position where somebody wanted to be,
you know, architecturally spectacular and invertict commons managed. So you said,
what you've probably seen this foot all around him. But
what's astonished to me now is that very wealthy people
(58:51):
are coming into town and they buy a place and
they know they're going to bother and then they's the
instruction to the architecture, I want to Santa Fe whatever.
So they've gone through Troubled the World or gone through
all the architectural magazine and so they pick a style
(59:14):
and they want one of us.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, Noosa seem to have its own vernacular for quite
a long time, contemporary vernacular, but it's under threat obviously.
Can we we've got about a minute. You mentioned the
final gazetting. Can you just do a couple of minutes
on that? The final You mentioned something like the gazetting,
the final of the national park program.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
This was, well, you know, we've got a little bit
more to do in national building. But but if we don't,
if we don't get any further success where the two
bodies set out the chief forty years ago, I personally
think we're going to have a highly fluid and far
(59:59):
less regular, denied life built environment. And here on them,
I think we're going to mandated town planning solutions imposed
on us, which will vary from what we want at
the moment. And I think we're going to struggle to
(01:00:21):
name day through the numbers. So I expect we'll end
up as a very wealthy on play. Yeah, part of
a ship'll be very wealthy enclaves with people that don't
live here very often, or if it's getting too crowded,
they just moved to one of their other houses. You
(01:00:42):
know a lot of these people. Now I've got two
or three house and so let us move around to
avoid the problems. And we won't have a workforce that
can serve us many restaurants and so on, So there'll
be a real top end where people are of a
forward to be driven in rubers very small number of
(01:01:04):
restaurants and spend a lot of money and so on.
And then there'll be a lot of the people are
here at the moment during their lifetime, so I'll I'll
hang in there, but they'll be moving around more guided
by when the big periods are, so it won't be
a free running place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Well, thank goodness for your book, Michael, because that's a
sort of visual testimony to what was and how it
came about, and how beautiful the vision was and how
and how it became. So so you know, I guess
books are good records of a kind of process and
maybe in twenty years time people can refer back to
that lots to talk about. Michael, thank you so much
(01:01:47):
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Good thank you, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Michael Gloucester from LUSA, Queensland, Australia. This program was made
with assistance from New Zealand on.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
The radio past and through the Excessmedia dot INZID website.
Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Thank you New Zealand on here
Hi, Local Architecture. Now for October, we're speaking with Michael
Gloucester from NUSA.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
How are you, Michael, really well speaking with you.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It's wonderful to be speaking with you. Thank you so
much for joining us. We'll mention the word NUSA just
to pull the audience in. I'm sure people have various
triggers when they think of NUSA, but we're lucky to
have Michael, who's been a resident for decades and has
been key part of the integral group in establishing NUSA
for what it is. So what are we going to
(00:41):
talk about?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well, I'd love to talk about how NURSA has become
what it is over the last forty years, checking with
an emphasis on environmental protection and architectal and town planning
guidance and so on. And if we've got time to
(01:03):
talk a little bit about what the future might hold.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It sounds wonderful. I got so interested in NUSA I
think back in two thousand and nine. I was a
later doptor of the town. I went there for the
first time in two thousand and nine and fell head
over and heels in love with it after having been
almost in tears having gone to surf for about a
week earlier, and at the end of my stay, I
(01:25):
took a first trip around one of your beautiful national
parks on the peninsula there and arrived at the infosector
and a couple of enthusiastic volunteers at the desk who
were Kiwi's got me to buy the book, The Shaping
of NUSA, which was written by you, Michael Gloucester. And
it's a beautiful book and every way graphically but also
(01:46):
as a narrative in a story and a history. So
wonderful all these years later that you're able to join us.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
That book was written when we just made enough progress
to have confidence we maybe or to make news a
bit special. And since then, what's twenty five years ago
when that was written, Since then, we've faced many further calendars,
We've had many significant wins, and we're taking a few hits.
(02:14):
So let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Let's talk about it. That seems to be the character
of the book, the hits and the winds. You were saying,
this is timely. I didn't quite gather the information, but
it's the final gazetting, Is that correct? Of the last
national park?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yes? Well, well, some forty years ago a number of colleges,
and I faced up to the brutal reality that Musa
is such a beautiful place foc esthetically and climate wise,
but it was always going to be under relentless development pressure.
(02:54):
Particularly it's situated at the northern end of the Sunshine
sorry Sunshine exactas Queensland, which is really one of the
most significant growth areas in Australia generally. So forty years
ago we set big targets, big dreams on how we're
going to try to protect the physical environment, the natural environment,
(03:15):
both well just from an esthetical beauty perspective, but as
importantly from an ecological conservation perspective. But at the same
time we wanted to do it in a way where
we'd end up with a human settlement pattern which was
a lifeful and exit lightly within that landscape. So when
(03:36):
I wrote that book twenty five years ago, we're about
halfway through that, a bit more than it, a bit
less than halfway through what's turned out to be a
parting year journey where we now finally have conserved perpetually
as national path for most significant landscapes and seascapes, and
(04:00):
we've made very good progress in getting a build environments
within that, but we are now. But the more successful
we are, and this is the paradox, but the more
successful we've been in doing that, the more attractive we've been.
Or but come to everybody wanting to get a footholding
(04:23):
and develop a hell out of the place, and or
coming in the love the place. But there's so many
people coming and loving the place which being loved for that.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I did notice that when I returned, probably ten years later,
I thought that Nissau was basically unable to be kind
of detracted from. I thought the planning, and I thought
the ecology, and I thought the geography and the wonderful
architecture and urban escape had managed to safeguard itself against
(04:53):
any future kind of upheavals. But I did notice an
abundance of cars from outside as day trippers seemed to
a little more dusty because of that. Even then, there
were no sense of awful car parks. Even though there
were a lot of cars. There was still a sense
of the cars being nudged in in green areas alongside
trade environments. So it was still very successful even then.
(05:15):
Sort of aesthetically, yes, well, but.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
There's no doubt that over time the sense of place,
particularly in your urban environment or suburban environments on the
coast and zone. It's bacteriating and it will continue to deteria.
I think what weent is that we can perpetually conserve
(05:38):
half the lanscope. When you're up to half of the
shire it's now national park. We visited it was about
ten or fifteen percent, So there's been real progress in
protecting the overall field of the of the region. Like
(05:59):
even if you're driving increasingly crowded roads, you've almost always
got it on one side of another a chunk of
national path or a river escape or a sea scape
for work. But people continue to come and where we're
(06:21):
working on managing that better. However, a lot of the
ability to manage tourism in a way where lends with
local lifestyles and doesn't overly impact on the physical environment,
a lot of those leaders are controlled by the state
(06:43):
government and the State of Queensland, and they're not particularly
sympathetic to us trying to manage a tourism based economy
in a way where can people for both visit and
residents both tend to take on one size fits all,
(07:06):
and across Swingsland, the predominant ethos is still hit before
the maximum surgeons growth.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I think the success of NUSA was that you understood
design from the get go. I mean yourself was an architect,
urban designer. I believe your wife was a landscape architect.
So you had design at the beginning, around the table,
you know, part of the whole policy planning, decision making
in all of that. But I'm finding in New Zealand
(07:37):
as well, design isn't around the table at this policy
level of local or regional or state government.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So design.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Thinking enabled the success of NUSA across ecology, across geography.
But without that design thinking in today's generational approach, maybe
that's where the the decision making or the problem solving
is not achieved.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well, yes, but the state of differently, like in Australia,
you know we've got three levels of government. In unfortunate
two we haven't been able to get close to the
same type of integrated thinking between shaping your natural environmental
(08:27):
defection of it and shaping town planning and shaping the
environment and so on. We're able to do that at
the Mursi level Mane through relentless hard work of getting
successful merse accountils elected who are sympathetic to that view,
but we haven't been able to persuade the state government
(08:50):
to approach it in the same integrative way. And I
hold the most important leavers now that need to be
pulled in order to be able to run an economy
local economy where you know, it's very very supportive of tourism,
(09:14):
supportive of tourism in a way where numbers are managed
so that at any one time visitors have a delightful
experience as the localist rather than it has been a zero.
But we also know there's nowhere around Australia that's achieved
that level of integration. So the upside for us is
(09:35):
we'd argue we're way ahead of the pack compared to
most areas, and it's under real pressure from popular browken song,
but we haven't been able to crack through where we
can really manage our tourism economy in the way we
want it and we're do internally.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, do you think it's a generational moment. I mean
the moment when NUSSA, you all came together at NUSA
and as you said, it still on the shoulders of
the classic conservationist of the fifties in that region, there
was a moment of sort of intellectual or or age
or related or sort of informed disciplinary approach to things.
(10:24):
And it happened that way in terms of a collaborative approach.
But is it a generational shift, I mean, we just
haven't quite got that collective thought going now or is
it the fact that it's a larger state related.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yes, it's not job, it's not generational. It's let's describe
those three ways you referred to a classic conservation you're
the fifties. That actually started in the sixties. But for
the first twenty years, the leaders of the nurser Ark
(11:02):
of safe At which is the local conservation group which
I've been leading to the last forty years. But the
first twenty years the leaders were very very well trained
natural scientists, and they were able to lobby directly to
(11:23):
the state government to get large chunks of land further
northern mers protected as national path. But most of that
land wasn't contested by any of the local people or
the economy. That land was contested by international sand miners
(11:45):
or national castal companies and so on, And so that
first generation was able to have their battle with those
fastal interests and the sand mining interests and the logging interests.
They were to do that by engaging with well basically literate,
(12:06):
scientifically literate bureaucrats in the Queensland bureaucracy in prison. Most
of much battles didn't really leak out into the public.
But by the nineteen eighties when I got involved and
the leader of that first era he visited in wits End,
(12:27):
was that modeluld run into a brick wall because close
to the nurser all the land that was important was
already under lease sold to private interests. Anything was freeholding.
It was more or less impossible there again, but there
was large, large development leasels. But that meant we had to.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Change our tactics completely and become intimately involved and finally
to influence as much as we could local government and
its ability to town plan and so town planning and
(13:11):
having a majority of our members on news a council
over many years became.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Our key leader. More recently that approach has hit the
brick wall. Just as the first wave hit the brick
ball in in the eight is now in the twoenty
twenties you're getting far greater stating the bench coming in
(13:39):
and writing over the top of local government generally and
Bleenson and that's driven well, it's half driven by developer greed,
a loving in state level that's always been there. The
other thing is that the housing crisis post COVID nationally
and the state as caused both for beds and the
(14:03):
state and all the states for that country to override
local councils. And that's that's the movement where the Pencer
movement we're in at the moment, and we just still
find our way through it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
That's interesting direct parallels with Hair and our hair on
New Zealand and our little council as well understanding urban
design and geography. I'm living in a coastal region like
yours in a way where the physical geography is so
dominant and wonderful, but then we have this housing kind
of focus as well, So that very interesting. I mean,
(14:42):
our council are having to work both in the community
and cognizant of what the national prescription is currently HM.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yes, So locally we've had to rethink and recalibrate what
we regard as an acceptable print form or settlement in
order to accommodate greater social housing, afford the houses for work.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So what's the crux of that right now then, I
mean for me as an architect, I just adored the
looser architectural landscape back in two thousand and nine. But
now you've got to re calibrate. I mean, how do
you how does that text the brain and the communication skills.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, you see, because we've been so successful in controlling
the development book and by that I mean in nineteen
sixty two one percent mercershis national park, in nineteen eighty
to ten percent, and now today something like forty four percent,
(15:57):
So we're dramatically contract the area that can actually be developed.
And at the same time, like twenty years ago when
you came to Mercery, were already had in a very
very type type limit. And the whole philosophy was if
we could control the footprint by reducing it progressively reducing it,
(16:20):
getting it potentially said its national path, and you could
control high now high rise nothing over three stories, you'd
basically be controlling the population, but the population size. So
everyone was designed around that. So the built environment you
(16:43):
saw was low scale and sacked well within the landscape.
So that's worked for twenty years, but it's under challenge
now from a back a minute, But what we didn't
anticipate was relentless growth of day trippers and which and
(17:03):
that changed in COVID because we got smashed during COVID
by day trippers, and that's set up a new path
of day trippers. And the other will we sort of
half the sort that we thought we'd be upper managerment.
What we didn't see coming was the relentless rise of
(17:27):
Airbnb and stays inside. So we've now got a large
parts at the top end of the market in terms
of real estate where there used to be our own
by wealthy families and they'd come up perhaps three or
(17:47):
four weeks of the year and the rest of the
time the places would be vacant. Now there it's like
street up the street of small mini hotel which are
short stay erects, and so that's that's increased the number
of people and the number of cars in nursing year round,
(18:11):
so that these are structural shifts, but the changes in
town planning settings, changes with Airbnb, the changes in increased
number of day trippers. Finding this is from a region
in a southeast Queensland where nurse is still the most
(18:31):
beautiful place to go that you can get to within
an hour half strive. These are things that are cause
in your changes. It's not a generational problem with who's
in those are trying to look after it. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
It's interesting because you're you've had like success and now
you're trying to deal with the outcome of that, Whereas
in our coastal area we're still like a baby. We're
still just a beach side reserve with no real understanding
of planning whatsoever to manage human settlement within a beautiful geography.
(19:09):
So we're coming from it like naively, whereas you're coming
and the same problems with housing and and But I
think our attitude is that we want to increase tourism,
perhaps hopefully appropriately, and maybe there are some lessons from
your past that you can teach us, but you're struggling
with the present from from the other point of view,
(19:30):
have having been very successful, yes.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Well it's I think it's a paradox the world over.
But the more attractive a place becomes, or the more
attractive and mature place being compared to surrounding areas, the
more you're going to get ham it unless you work
out how to manage against getting hammered.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
You've got to have the tools that you disposed. If
you car through that, then you've really got to start
playing a political and policy game at a much file
level of government or governments. For example. In my view,
(20:19):
the only way news is going to get out of
its current anund them is when it can persuade state
governments of either political persuasion, but it's in the state
economic interest to perceived differently from most areas in the state.
And that really means where go argue, let us manage
(20:43):
this place, where we will manage it where it's a
delightful place to visit and to live. But guess what,
not everybody can visit At the same time, we're going
to have to manage numbers by time, which really will
(21:04):
end up looking like if we're successful, a booking system
where if you wake up in the morning in Brisbane
and you've decide to want to take a day trip
up to nurser rather than taking their gamble, which is
what people do at the moment, they jump in their
car and then an hour and a half later they
find out where they can get a car park, or
(21:25):
they can get near to thee to the national park
they want to visit, or whether it's just a grid life.
We've got a merger stage and where the state government
works with us to allow us to set up really
a booking system where you say I want to go
to I want to take drive up and take the
(21:45):
family to Mercer next burst, and the answer comes back, sorry,
no slots available, but why don't could drive a following
Tuesdale that type of approach, So it's a bit like
it's stretching. It's a metaphor, but it's a bit like
running a popular restaurant where people have to book and
(22:07):
finally there's limits to the sitting time, so you know
you can book from as you know. Now if you
want to get into a really good popular restaurant, not
only got a book, but you've got to accept to
our slot. Well, I think Moose is going to have
to manage its dissipation that way or the only other model,
(22:32):
which is to just use price, use prices, but that
way you end up tapering to a clientele it's just
the rich and nobody. Shouldn't say nobody, but Musa generally
doesn't want to be a en flavor where only the
super rich can afford to this. The only two leaders
(22:54):
either price or booking by time.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
There's one ultimate approach that all places become like NUSA.
You know that they if all places could have that
quality understanding of place that nusa's original brief seem to
have been to actually give yourself a sort of plan
in the future. If they could break down this whole.
I mean, this is not going to happen, but if
(23:19):
there could be more, if there could be other places
which respect geography and environment and human settlement, then it
wouldn't all just be NUSA is the place you've got
to go. But that requires state level understanding of design
and urban design thinking.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Yes, and we don't see any evidence of that.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I mean in the profession, as you know, all over
the world we're talking about we're starting to discuss it's
become almost not a cliche but a lovely term identity
of place, place making, creating place. And as designers, we
don't just say that as a sort of an airy
fairy nice thing. We see it as an It has
economic value. It's an economy of people, people thriving because
(24:05):
they want to be in that place. And if that
idea as a sort of as a sort of an
architectural idea can start to gain some sort of colloquialism
within politics, they will say that economics isn't just like
you know, get the big keynote, tenant holder, blockbuster firms
(24:27):
into that place, and then we'll build something around it.
If they could recognize that the key thing is that
people want to come to a place and NUSS is
an outstanding reason because of your huge population problems you've got,
maybe in twenty years time, you know that politics will
change around what tourism economics is all about, and then
(24:47):
it could be more of an evenly distributed series of
places that people want to either live in permanently and
start to sort of galvanize the way that they manage
their places with support of government to do so and
from a resident bottom up approach and a government understanding
of what the residents are trying to achieve. I mean,
(25:09):
that's that's the theory for the future.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It's a nice theory. Attach a course is if you
if if there's a mistake made on the journey to
achieving a top vision you're talking about, you can't reverse No,
(25:34):
you can reverse it somewhat, but it's an enormous sept.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So we were just the session we had before yours
was with Afdalazez, who was the director of a film
called The Genius of the Place, which was about the
life and times of Jeffrey Bauer, an architect in Sri Lanka.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
And I know this work and I would have loved
to match.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, well, the film was wonderful. If you it's easily
available The Genius of the Place. But I said, well,
why from looking at the movie and these beautiful drone shots,
it's such an extraordinary beautiful place. Why is there such
an extensive amount of jungle and green and lakes. And
he said, well, ninety percent of Sri Lanka is unbuilt
(26:26):
on and that is because they had thirty years civil war,
so nobody went there. And he was saying, you know,
why does you know think? Okay, well, Sri Lanka. Now
he's inviting. The movie was about increasing tourism to to
invite people to visit Sri lank and you think, oh
my gosh, it will be just like every other expanse
of Asian city, you know, Bangkok and so forth. And
(26:48):
we ended the conversation saying, well, why does it have
to be you know, surely doesn't have to go the
way of every other Asian hotspot. But you know, as
you say, if you make one mistake, you're heading down
that track like a dragonnaut.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Where on our local A b C network, there's been
a program showing in the last over the last week
of what's happening in Valley, just a whole spale on
score of the overdevelopment on the coastal stript And and
(27:25):
of course it's happening because one it's an attractive place,
and two there's no real regulation or planning regulation or regime,
it stops. And so if you don't have a regulation
in place, or and we knew forty years ago that
(27:50):
there was seen town planning. We knew that every town
plan that's normally prepared has a future development and they've
got green cords, which I pretend they're going to be
there forever. But you go back and look at the
plan ten or fifteen minutes later, and the green belts
(28:11):
have become future development corridors and may become suburbs. And
so you've got to perpetually protect your green quickly. You've
got to get in way ahead of the inevitable pressures
that are coming towards you. And I see that happening
(28:32):
very very rarely. I can't, but I can't see it
happening in three land. Well, who's going to bring close
a national estate set of planning restrictions to preserve those
lives natural results?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yes, exactly. I mean the film will be a bit
like Nuser. It shows such a delightfully beautiful place, it
will attract so many people and then it's under threat.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Well, you see, the insidious step is not the attacking them,
the people that that happens, but the the developers and
the speculators are relentlessly coming over the whole landscape looking
(29:28):
for where they can get in and basically development.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I totally agree with you so, and.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
You know it probably happened to you when I went
through architecture, when I went through town planning and environmental planning.
Within my student totals at my colleagues roughly path end
up becoming based in serv of the development industry. And
(30:03):
some of them are very very clever, and so the
development side is far better organized and better equipped and
better resource ah than in the sort of community of
the community trying to protect. Yeah, and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
More motivated, but they're not very clever. I mean that
they're smart, they can do it. They they know, they've
got the capacity to green field, you know whatever for
whatever development that they're keyed in for. That that's there,
but it's a very narrow They're successful because they have
very narrow fields of vision, so they don't ask the
questions and they don't have the problem. They can just
(30:45):
do it. And because they're so quick off the mark,
the councilors well locally anyway, they just you know, nod
to them and say, you know, they have absolutely no
real barriers to proceeding from within out within council because
they've got all the equipment. They're up and going, and
they there can do a bunch of people correct all that.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
And in LUSA we're basically had the better of them
for sixty years.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Wow, there's because of the broader trends and the concerns
for housing and so on. Well, they and their lobbyists
and their professional associations inside have far more influence into
government policy than than the traditional conservation movement, of the
(31:38):
traditional beautiful movement and so on.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I mean, we're hearing a few voices apparently in the
latest news there an architect magazine that the organ of
the Institute god Old Pip Chiesshire apparently has saying that
the institute and the architects need to have much more
a voice. We need to be much more out there
in an act of a sense, and you know, the
the idea that we need to have, and I know
that Australia is ahead of New Zealand. We need to
(32:04):
have government architects in place. We need to have architects
and designers within these government fields so that this concept
of place and building and people has a real economic
validity rather than just we've got to get this thing
(32:24):
done and we need a digger, you know, which is
what happens here and before you know it, within a day,
precious little micro cosms are lost because some and to me,
you know, it's hard because a lot of these development
it's sort of a virtual signing approach. They call it
tidying up. They feel almost virtuous that they're tidying up
(32:45):
this useless, vacant piece of land and they have this
sort of power, this kind of oh, you know, we're
doing a good job. We're tiding it up pretty quickly
for you.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yes, And I do believe that local community awareness and
the termination and vision and so on. If it's if
it's well developed and in trench it can match that
most of the time.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, that's good. I mean, you guys did.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Well. We did, and I'm still hopeful we still can't.
Although the built environment will not be the resultant built
environment will not be as attractive as for one new
visited twenty five years ago. But see, I'd argue, I
(33:45):
don't think you can walk into many places on reserve
where the building environment is a skimness scale and as
person as it was twenty five years ago. Most you
to one way threat.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
What's our profession for if we can't activate it? I mean,
you know, we can't practice it in the way that
we believe. I mean, let's just say like that the
crux of this green field approach, which here is rampant
in the coast, we've got masses of They still think
this because it's less developed than Wellington, the capital city,
and our down the road. They think, you know, they
can there's more land to develop, so it just gets
(34:24):
developed and badly. I mean, the resulting human settlement style
is just these awfully badly designed little suburbs that are
a complete waste of the available land resource that they
had available to them at the start, so this is happening.
But then I'm just across from where I'm talking to you,
just the next block over, but opposite the little railway station.
(34:45):
We've got this bit of land. We might call it
a brownfield site, and we've got the council to buy it.
Because housing is on everybody, you know, it's so forefront,
and they light the idea of medium dencity housing along
transport routes. This site was ideal and backs onto a
very declining small shopping center which needs violency. So so the
(35:08):
idea long term is appropriate kinds of housing but in
a community ultimately great community hub side of sense. So
in the short term we're going to have this little
small community hub, little sort of pavilions to get activation
and engagement, temporary kind of approach. And this site had
a little old house on it which had to be demolished,
which was fine because it was you know, asbestodrin, and
(35:32):
beside it for years had been an empty section grassed
with wildflowers and all sorts of things on it. So
it was a two lot site and we were going
to build the thing on the gravel, on the demolished
hard surface, and then we're going to intervene little sort
of seatings and little bits and pieces on the green site. Right,
that was the brief even from council. And there was
little wildflowers and we're going we're going to sort of
(35:54):
multiply these wildflowers, so we're going to intervene on what
was already there. It was a memory for people. There
were shop shop SOPs and for years there was an
empty space of green and the people who had been
tenanting the house, they'd put sculptures in there for sale.
So that was all good, you know, and we designed
something up. And then I walked past the other day
and the good old project managers that have been you
know commissioned, you know, they've just gone and leveled the
(36:16):
whole site. I mean it's easy for them. It's a
small site. We've got the digger on my mouths will
take the whole lot out. I mean, it's it's a
five second decision between someone in council and the developer
who's going to making it easy for everybody. But now
we're starting. You know, they've taken all the topsoil off
and they've dumped it beside, you know, the site. So
we've now got to reput this topsail back on. That's
(36:38):
like probably no two days work, you know, at a
cost that didn't need to happen. And so that's a tiny,
tiny example of it's so much easier just to level
the whole site. We've got the digger on site, let's
do it. That is minute, but it has a huge
you know, and it's happening on a much greater scale elsewhere,
and you know, we speak to the counts. He thought, Oh,
it was just easier to do that. It makes me
(37:01):
angry because I'm I'm dealing with it in a small
way seeing it all around me.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
You know, it's not easy being an architect. Essentially, it's
a powerless profession. But by that I mean most of
the time architects have to bend in. They have to
the person playing the suing.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, and we're polite people. We believe in communication and
working with a political awareness, but working together and because
we're used to responding clearly to clients and communicating with clients,
so we do this at the political level as well.
But it's a it's a it's an unusual, unusual approach,
(37:48):
I think when they're not used to that sort of well,
it's interdisciplinary approach.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Of a ways found it point but particularly h in effective.
You see in Nurse of What we put together a
couple of us that were architects and found plans and
there was one person's or lawyer, and there's one person's aunt.
But it was cold blood of me to take over
(38:19):
the council for at least a generation and to pull
the leaders of power. There weren't too many discussions that
hobboard over the detail of how great paid Little Square
Urban Square could have done. It wasn't time for that.
M hm. Like I think you were either you've got
(38:42):
to immerse yourself in the front line where power is
paying itself out, and you can do that as an activist,
but often in effective. All you you've somehow got to
crack the power block and become become.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Venus that Well, that's the story of NUSSA and that's rare.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yes, I agree, and like it's one of the people
that have been involved in that. There's a fair amount
of scorn that comes from sections of the campaigning profession,
architectural profession, and conservation movements. So I also only guys
have solved out.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Because I think there's a lot of particularly when you
train as an architect, and that was my first dere
you train in a way where you're not aware at
the time, but you really are being trained to be
self righteous because you're you're trained, but you've got to
it's your responsibility to work out what's an appropriate balance
(39:57):
and integration of the diverse at a sign better it
implicitly you've been trying to be a demi god and
then they get it out there that's not the way
they work. Offer.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
There was an architect mayor in a city in Brazil,
was it? They had an architect mayor in a town
in Brazil, and he introduced all sorts of incredible policies.
I can't remember the name of it now, Like you know,
I think I don't know if you were the mayor or.
(40:40):
I think you may have been. But you know, if
we can get that those designers and those positions of power,
as you say, it goes an incredibly long way into
establishing several decades of of intelligent planning.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Well, I agree. It would be better still to get
regional scale landscape architect regional scale planners that were really
interested and integration of conservation and sentiment and so on
(41:17):
and like architects can do it too, but I don't
think that's the first professional pool to try to improve.
If you're really trying to put together an idea of
a local government must have.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
The trouble with with with the other the policy and
the planners, and I still need someone to design it.
I mean, yours obviously worked because you understood. You actually
pushed through policy and planning to secure NUS's national parks.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
And also we also gave privileged treatment to talented visionary architects.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
So that's where it's at. You see, you need you
need the people to be able to design and achieve
built form as well, and that tends to get lost
if architects aren't enough sufficiently in the in the around
that table, because you can have as much because as
soon as you get into planning and so far you've
got so many reports, you've got so many people that
(42:24):
have to have an opinion, but you still have to
be able to produce a building, and so design has
to be in there, and I think that gets lost.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yes, well, let's go back to your example Jeffrey Baa.
I haven't seen the film, I've read his books. The
way he talks about walking onto a site and there's
a large site for something larger touris and developments, and
(42:54):
so he he had that ability to see large sites
and buildings nestled within those sites and when it when
it was appropriate to modify the site, like he quite
willfully modified the photography of sites, but not the whole site.
(43:15):
But the end result was a wonderful foreman and landscape.
But I'd argue that he had an ability to design
at a scale which a number of artifictures got but
many haven't. It's because it's much bigger. He was paying
at a bigger scale.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
H Was it because he had the because of the
Civil War he had more room? Who knows? He had
more room because he could be more experimental because there
was no sort of formal.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Well force, partly that and partly he had a highly
unusual education, like he was a product of the AI
Architecture of Association in London, which was far more of
an apprenticeship. And he also came from well basically aristocratic roots. Yeah,
(44:13):
and so I imagine him as a very talented if you
met him, a very very talented visual and stacial designer.
We've got both filk former and environment, but who also
was imperiods. Yeah, he saw himself a bit like a
(44:35):
conductor of a symphony orchestra sans he was orchestrating the
big picture and a whole lot of basically workers only.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, I guess it is fraight Lloyd Wright of this
of the same milk.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Well, yes, and when you look at his settlements out
in the desert and sign he was definitely able and
very comfortable and very talented in designing at a landscape level,
not a block level.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
But I don't know who are the heroes in New Zealand.
Who are the heroes in Australia? But are operating in
that scale? And I think the answer comes back not many,
simply because there's so rarely an opportunity. There's so really
a brief shows up at scale.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
I mean our architects doing it in China and in
the Middle East. You know that the British architects who
get these big jobs or is that more sort of
business marketing kind of you know, get the building and
compete with everybody else on the world stage.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
I'm not sure, but I don't see I find a
lot of the modern city news. I just find them
astonishing architectural things, but I don't see too much evidence
of a balanced nature.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah. Yeah, we were speaking to an architect, a Kiwi
guy who practices in Paris, who's working on a university
outside of Cairo, and we were discussing, you know, the
geography of the desert and what you work with in
that sense, you know, a desert sort of environment, shadow
and sun and things like that. So he was he
(46:31):
was thinking it through as we were speaking. In some ways. Yeah,
for the listeners, would you be interested in doing a
little bit of a reminiscent sort of retrospect of the
look of NUSA Township. I mean, you know, I mean
as a community urban space design experience, a street level
experience for the average public person. It was successful, and
(46:54):
you knew the sea was just over there, but you
were actually shopping and shopping in a retail precinct. And
the two saying, the two of them, we're not in conflict.
Is there any sort of like descriptive comments you might
like to make about the you know, the traditional NUSA
urban experience just sort of visually.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
Well, sometimes sometimes I imagine the whole thing imagining on
a bird that can just yea fly five high enough
to see what happened and going on. Or let's say
you're a hang glider, but the first thing you know
(47:38):
is at that level is there's continuous spirits, a large
slaves of National Path, or it's just streend stuff, but
it happens protective now Perpetual's National Path which runs right
through the middle of the shire and raps around a
(48:01):
whole lot of small, small coastal communities and so on.
And if you've then come down to and none of
the buildings are high for buildings ness in the landscape,
if you come down to Ben Rover and you're on
a bike or you're driving a car, you're very rarely
(48:25):
more than a few minutes going through a road escape
or a street scape where there's not a natural vista
on one side. So it's either ocean or beach, or
river or green and the greens either National Park or
the tech space. So if you're living in any of
(48:46):
those subjects right through the shire, you're within a few
minutes walk of either green or river or coast beach
except except in other words, there's no large waves of
suburbia and it was designed very consciously with that from
(49:14):
the get go. Bearing in mind when we showed up
sixteen years ago, there was a road pattern and there
was a village established village patterns. So for all that's
been reinforced in a way where it didn't just explode
into continuous suburbia.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
So you could see the original village pattern and you
kind of responded to that kind of visual memory and
and and involved from from something like that, but also
with some controls around development.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Well, basically you surround every one of those villages original
village by national Yeah. To move from one to another,
you have to drive through a natural path or you
have to drive along a beach reserve.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
Yeah, So so that that was always an intent too,
realizing that those villages would be transformed dramatically other time.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
Like if you brought back to somebody that was living
in those villages sixty years ago and you showed from
what's there now they shop, but there's still human scale
aggregations of settlement which are separated from the next aggregation
by a green belt national park at the Petro National
(50:48):
Petrol but the green between them now chan't be developed.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah. Did it happen naturally or was it part of
your kind of triggering policy that the artists and the
cultural and the and the hospitality, you know, the creative
movers and shakers around the arts and the culture and
those sort of festivals. Was that just because people were
(51:16):
there and they were interested and they created those things.
And I think you guys as counselor supported that. I mean,
there's a life in those settlements, which is you know,
grew up from within those village urban places.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yes, well I did it sixteen years ago when when
therese facts are say they can to the start, there
were people moving into all those villages from mainly from Melbourne,
and well they migrated in and the reason was that
(51:54):
they were attracted places for and they were close to
the whole I really know start on beaches and prific
bushwarks and so on and so on. So early on
locals in each of those communities banued what they had.
Our challenge became and we were successful at it to
(52:16):
articulate that has a network of villages and we had
to ensure that the essence of the villages were protected.
But it wasn't preserving old village, which is why some
communities go it. Let's protect human scale, let's protect the
(52:41):
size of the footprint of the village. But within those
sort of broad parameters, there was nothing precious if people
wanted to knock down a nineteen twenty cottage and build
a contemporary home. Hm.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
We've never gone to Lage, so it's not like you
go to a little historic town.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
It's a vibrant Yes, And there might be one street
where there's still a row of old buildings which are
so nice that they're playing their own they're in the
modern economy because there building.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, and like the hostel, the y h a there
is in the most beautiful location is such a fantastic
building and it's just up from the main street, Hasting Street,
but it's still it's got the the memory for visitors
such as the youth traveler or whoever of the of
the Queenslander.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Mm hmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Yeah. But you yeah, I think there was just this
sort of cultural explosion, wasn't there within it, like the
regular annual festivals of jazz and arts and so forth,
that was sort of nurtured.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Yeah, and that's still all there.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
I just noticed that the first time I went. You know,
you think you're going to NUSA, you're going to have
to buy an expensive dress. I walked into this gorgeous
dress shop and came up with two gorgeous things for
a song. You know that wasn't expensive. But I think
that's generally in Australia. You know, dresses are much cheaper
in Australia now in New Zealand because keep Australians like
to wear a dresses because it's hot weather. But you
know you can go to NUSA and come away and
(54:25):
not spend a lot of money. I think it may
have changed now.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Well, well all those really idiosyncratic, artistically driven batique fove
botiques and some that you would have seen ty five
years ago. I have the exist yeah. Now it's just
about all Chames you know save yeah, all all your
(54:51):
national trendy clothes chains.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Yeah, the chains yeah change.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
I have a place in these or a friend tis
even stop paying its own way. It's it's fair as
part of a national brand for that.
Speaker 4 (55:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
And so people have come here the shop now they
could easily go to a range of communities around Australia
have exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
I think that's yeah, it's happened in New Zealand. I
mean small boutique retailers just don't can't, can't gain a
footing any further. I mean, it's it's it's a it's
a different thing, a different sort of urban experience for
for visitors, it's a shopping thing. It's yeah, it's it's
it's an issue when we as designers and assets want
(55:43):
to create place. I think it's a reframing of of
what these urban experience is going to be. And we're
over the big box. But that's all the offering predominantly
that's available.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
Yes, well, you see, I find it interesting. The architectural
trap is to try to design exactly what you bid wants.
Let's talk resident and the simplest foot and you do
that and inevitably, we're not inevitable, but nine times out
(56:21):
of ten the owner wants to move somewhere else or
like four person place goes on the market and the
next buyer is probably going to knuck around about house
affair did and in a place like Nursey, the good
chance I'm not at over and start again. So at
(56:47):
the individual house level, that doesn't matter all briefly, but
once you start trying to design settlement at a neighbor level,
a village level, or community level, yeah, it's very hard
(57:08):
to build the flexibility into that built form in a
way that it can be usefully readapted time and again.
Speaker 2 (57:19):
Years.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Yeah, the patterns and use of changes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
I remember someone saying, right, someone writing about Tokyo, the
joy of Tokyo, that it's constantly been demolished and rebuilt,
and it sounded, you know, it didn't matter that it
was new and changing all the time. It was still
full of life. So maybe that's reality in the big city.
Speaker 3 (57:42):
Well yeah, and yet it doesn't sit well with net zero.
No exactly so, but we just had the example he
one of our most revered or most celebrated arts architect
called John Mainwaring. He ran he built a house, designed
(58:04):
a house for fine twenty five years ago and won
a raft of national awards. It was like by the
architecture is most stuff been built in those since then
become heavy and pondrous. But it was like the architecture
nationally awarded famous. It got pulled down last year. But
(58:30):
because it's in a position where somebody wanted to be,
you know, architecturally spectacular and invertict commons managed. So you said,
what you've probably seen this foot all around him. But
what's astonished to me now is that very wealthy people
(58:51):
are coming into town and they buy a place and
they know they're going to bother and then they's the
instruction to the architecture, I want to Santa Fe whatever.
So they've gone through Troubled the World or gone through
all the architectural magazine and so they pick a style
(59:14):
and they want one of us.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, Noosa seem to have its own vernacular for quite
a long time, contemporary vernacular, but it's under threat obviously.
Can we we've got about a minute. You mentioned the
final gazetting. Can you just do a couple of minutes
on that? The final You mentioned something like the gazetting,
the final of the national park program.
Speaker 3 (59:37):
This was, well, you know, we've got a little bit
more to do in national building. But but if we don't,
if we don't get any further success where the two
bodies set out the chief forty years ago, I personally
think we're going to have a highly fluid and far
(59:59):
less regular, denied life built environment. And here on them,
I think we're going to mandated town planning solutions imposed
on us, which will vary from what we want at
the moment. And I think we're going to struggle to
(01:00:21):
name day through the numbers. So I expect we'll end
up as a very wealthy on play. Yeah, part of
a ship'll be very wealthy enclaves with people that don't
live here very often, or if it's getting too crowded,
they just moved to one of their other houses. You
(01:00:42):
know a lot of these people. Now I've got two
or three house and so let us move around to
avoid the problems. And we won't have a workforce that
can serve us many restaurants and so on, So there'll
be a real top end where people are of a
forward to be driven in rubers very small number of
(01:01:04):
restaurants and spend a lot of money and so on.
And then there'll be a lot of the people are
here at the moment during their lifetime, so I'll I'll
hang in there, but they'll be moving around more guided
by when the big periods are, so it won't be
a free running place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Well, thank goodness for your book, Michael, because that's a
sort of visual testimony to what was and how it
came about, and how beautiful the vision was and how
and how it became. So so you know, I guess
books are good records of a kind of process and
maybe in twenty years time people can refer back to
that lots to talk about. Michael, thank you so much
(01:01:47):
for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Good thank you, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Michael Gloucester from LUSA, Queensland, Australia. This program was made
with assistance from New Zealand on.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
The radio past and through the Excessmedia dot INZID website.
Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Thank you New Zealand on here
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