Crown [Hotel] Sydney designer Chris Wilkinson also likened Sydney to a “21st century Venice on steroids” but warned we cannot simply rely on the harbor’s natural assets to keep tourists happy...The Crown Sydney at Barangaroo will be a landmark tower and feature Sydney’s most luxurious hotel. — The Daily Telegraph
"With the rise in popularity of selfies and Instagram moments these architectural landmarks are becoming more and more an important representation of the city," Wilkinson told The Daily Telegraph, in reference to the Sydney Opera house and other popular destinations.
The designer wants to "push the envelope" of the local architecture in hopes that he might be a contributor in positioning Sydney as a "leading architectural city."
4 Comments
Very cool
Funny, my though was exactly the opposite. Designing architecture for an Instagram selfie sets a new low.
The desire to project ourselves largely on the landscape has been with us a long time, ever since we could make large constructions, leading to edifices that reflect civic pride and identity, systems of belief and cultural expression—and local vanity and hubris. Above, one artist's conception of the Colossus of Rhodes.
The Sydney monster literally says nothing about anything. Look at the picture in the post, how much the project dominates the landscape, in fact trivializes it, without accomplishing anything itself. The world has been reduced to the merest of abstractions, a glass shard where we can take pictures of ourselves or gaze in endless and pointless reflection. As an esthetic expression itself, the building soars in the void architecture has created, for itself.
It does speak to money, however, the supreme abstraction of our identity, the ultimate reduction of our worth. Of course it is a luxury hotel.
This might be a good place to recall the airy and vacant optimism that inflated the social media some years back, and look what Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have now become.
It only speaks to money. Like everything else.
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