As the architect and developer I imagined a precious, gritty little building exploding out of this tiny, Tokyo-like, 7 x 15 metre, forgotten site. A commercial redevelopment appeared more suitable to the intense nodal semiology of the Kings Cross circus, William Street Boulevard, the corner condition; the urbanity of traffic-tunnel-signage and the general prevalence of human lunacy. The place is cinema and the architecture - ART. The building acts as a sign – it is both art and architecture and a public art space. The composure of the sign, screen and sculptural base are shaped to reinforce to amplify the corner and put life back into the public domain. The new street uses re-charge this forgotten and denied part of Kings Cross. The architecture is anthropomorphic; composed of feet, body and head. The head – a crown, is composed of a rear illuminated, digitally-printed, public art space; the body consists of two glazed faces which are wrapped in a patternating –

‘art-environmental’ screen made of WR350 (cor ten) and the feet - a robust sculptural base and deck anchors the building firmly to the public domain. In plan the gutsy off form concrete structure nestles into two neighbouring buildings releasing two open skins, one west, one north, as glazed elements. The steel plated base is muscle and sculpture, a carved out corner affords better site lines and a place for the dispossessed to pull up. The architecture’s public persona carries a polemic – Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Australia’s greatest painter, blitzes the crown of the building with one of her paintings. This commitment to aboriginal culture is underwritten by the developer/architect. The entire gesture represents an entrepreneurial and architectural ‘knot’ – where architecture and capital become THE ‘ART WALL’ and a ‘nasty’ little forgotten corner, too small and difficult a site for most developers, becomes an architectural vision and a new urban reality.