Beauty ? Or Practicability ?

The McKell institute is calling for a world wide competition to design Sydney's new airport at Badgery's Creek.   It hopes that such an event may produce another Jorn Utzon and lead to another iconic structure that will attract world attention - like the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour bridge.

It certainly is a costly project.   The actual airport will probably cost more than $ 2.5 billion and the roads, rail and surrounding infrastructure another $ 3.5 billion.   The problem with opening it to a design competition is that this would surely lead to a clash between beauty - and practicability !

The Opera House is certainly an eye catching structure that must be one of the most photographed buildings in the world, but the very  nature of the soaring sails imposes limitations on the purpose for which it was intended.   Much of the stage area and orchestra space was a compromise - and this was acceptable because the building was located on a spit of land at the very apex of what the world remembers as Sydney - Circular Quay, the city backdrop - and the Harbour bridge.

This new airport will eventually supplant Kingsford Smith at Botany.   Air traffic and the ever expanding world population will see plane travel double and triple as the decades roll by - and we will need amazing vision to create a complex that is sufficiently elastic to meet those needs.   It would be a shame if the quest for beauty stifled practicability - and that is exactly what might happen unless the practical side of what is needed becomes the prime objective.

Creating an iconic building usually involves huge expanses of steel and concrete, and yet this new airport will need to constantly change to meet whatever emerges as our way of future travel.    Airplanes are getting bigger.  Will we see a return to the supersonic age which ended with Concorde ?   Will the future see giant hovercraft that can carry thousands ?    How far will the helicopter concept be adapted to bridge short flight travel ?    This new airport will need to meet every eventuality that the far sighted can see in their crystal ball.
That requires flexibility - the exact opposite of landmark iconic structures.

We will only get one shot at solving Sydney's future air travel needs.   There is no suitable land available for a third attempt and the outlay needed to develop Badgery's Creek will strain Federal and state coffers.  We need to get it right - on the first attempt !

For that reason, the specification on which design will be based needs to be the product of the best brains we can muster - and they need to look far into the future.   That is probably the most immediate challenge of this twenty-first century !