The ambience of Camberwell

It appears that the Camberwell Station redevelopment is back! And the NIMBY’s aren’t happy.

Apparently even Randall Marsh‘s mum wasn’t too happy with her son’s take on the site. And you can be sure that everyone’s favourite conservative liberal art types, Geoffrey Rush and Barry Humphries, will be up in arms loudly holding forth with their very own version of Pauline’s “I don’t like it”. The resident’s action group spokesperson is priceless though “This is worse than we expected, apart from a small strip of land near the station, the entire site will be covered in buildings and the ambience of Camberwell will be destroyed forever.”

Yes dear, what will happen when those dreadful people move in to live in the apartments? They might even be something other than white anglo-saxon protestants, heaven forbid! Because really, all of these new houses that Melbourne needs, can’t they just build them somewhere else? Those new housing estates are frightfully ugly, but at least one doesn’t have to look at them. Yes, send those people out there, somewhere else away from me and my time warp.

There is also the small issue of “the ambience of Camberwell”, does this woman see nothing odd about talking about the ambience of some train tracks?

Unfortunately, there aren’t any more images on the Wood Marsh site and I can’t even find a site for the developer, Tenterfield.

Architects vote too

An interesting addition to the Festival of Silliness that is the current federal election campaign is the RAIA’s party poll on issues affecting architecture and the built environment.

Basically, they’ve provided a bunch of statements to the parties and asked them to respond. So far only the Greens and the Coalition have gotten back to them it seems. There is so much bloody spin in the Coalition’s response that I could barely read it without feeling ill (from the dizziness you know), though I think they basically said that they wouldn’t give any money to the Venice Biennale. But they do quite clearly and in all seriousness quote a Demographia study, so they’re obviously a pack of simplistic morons. And the Greens, jeez, why can’t they work out how to print to PDF? They also want to “promote a distinctly Australian style” within architecture. Which sounds a) impossible and b) like jingoistic crap.

The RAIA has also created three BBQ Stopper Podcasts (their term, not mine), which seem to be recorded panel discussions, on the topics of housing affordability, sustainability and nation building. Will have to investigate further and report back, because I am in fact going to a bbq this weekend, so I’ll see if shouting something from the podcasts gets everyone to shut up and stop eating.

5 star treatment for everyone

it was announced today by the Building Commission that from May next year, all domestic renovation and extension work will include bringing the house up to a 5 star energy efficiency rating, press release here.

this is really a much more important step than introducing 5 star for new homes, simply because the vast majority of homes in Victoria are not new, but we do love to renovate. though it will still be pretty hard to make the argument for energy efficiency on the basis that it will save you money when greenhouse gas emissions are free and thus coal fired electricity remains so amazingly cheap.