There is an ironic edge to a project entitled "18% Unfinished".
The project explores the poetics of incomplete public space, and plays on the history of civic potential. It is the story of this building continued - with those elements currently incomplete allowed to remain so, and those new places and spaces unpolished and ‘casually’ organised.
Vaguely akin to a ruin, reminiscent of a timeless, abstract, "de Chirico", the imagery is languid and seductive.
A lowered ground plaza connects directly to the south face and functions of the House, stretches out towards a wall of serpentine, low-rise offices flanking the eastern boundary, and extends west beneath Spring Street to create an underground marketplace adjacent to Parliament Station. The incomplete "city wall" along Parliament Place leaves the existing House alone… to get on with the business of debate, discussion, dissention - perhaps even unfinished democracy.
The strength of this proposal ultimately lies in the powerful emblematic landscape plan that is the generator of the arrangement of new areas of public program. The concentration along Macarthur Place is an appropriate urban gesture, providing a built edge linking the Parliament with its Public Service precinct. The figure of 18% was regarded as an underestimation but the jury was compelled to reward the potential of the ideas over the evidence of the rendition.
Jury Comments
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