EDITOR’S LETTER

If you’ve walked around the city of Sydney in the past couple of years, you might have noticed the sheer number of construction sites – and the omni present sound of jack hammers. And you might have also noticed the interesting hoardings the City of Sydney council requires builders to install. Some of them feature work by contemporary artists, others display enlarged historical black and white photographs that depict the city’s streets in bygone eras.

They’re absolutely fascinating. Some show horsedrawn vehicles in the streets, in others those streets are bustling with cars and pedestrians.

One of the most intriguing aspects of these photos is that they depict the buildings that once stood on the streets. Many of them I can actually remember while others were way before my time. There were some real beauties in Sydney back then. I can’t help but feel that while placing the photos on temporary hoardings was a way to beautify them and prevent graffiti and billposters while giving passersby a history lesson, they also serve as a heartbreaking reminder of what great buildings we have lost in the name of progress, and of our addiction to demolition and rebuilding. But perhaps that was the council’s intention.

Don’ t get me wrong, I like and admire contemporary architecture (I’d even go so far as to call myself a staunch modernist), but I also have an appreciation for the city’s past grandeur and the craftsmanship and beauty in old buildings. Respecting heritage and desiring the new and modern don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

It’s a point made in a story by Luke Slattery in this month’s design-themed edition of WISH.

Luke visits two heritage houses in Tasmania that have both been given a new lease of life by two different architectural firms – and both have been award winners. What unites the projects is that the architectural intervention was premised on “a rigorous investigation of the past, which is different from a nostalgic recreation”. I loathe nostalgia and I have no truck with the style of building that Prince Charles advocates, which strives to mimic the past in new constructions. Architecture should reflect the time in which it was built, not a long-gone one.

In a similar vein to Luke’s story, writer Lisa Green looks at three recently renovated architecturally significant houses in Melbourne and Sydney. The homes are from three different eras but, as Lisa discovered, taking on a renovation like the ones featured in her story not only requires deep pockets, but a great passion for the period and style in which the house was originally built. The projects featured in her story are all in a way acts of architectural philanthropy.

Also in this issue, our Copenhagen-based writer

Jeni Porter takes a look at an unexpected trend in Danish design. While we might think of Scandinavian interior design as being all about blonde wood and white walls, the Danes, she says, have gone mad for colour – and lots of it.

Fiona McCarthy meets the stellar team–Renzo Piano and Daniel Goldberg–behind a new luxury apartment development in Bar angaroo; Jason M owen profiles the Los Angeles-based interior designer and antique dealer Richard Shapiro; and I meet Lyndell and Daniel Drog a–a couple who commissioned architects D ur bach Block Jaggers to design them two extraordinary homes 25 years apart.

And finally, back in Sydney and its built environment, deputy editor Mi land a Rout takes a look at Green Square, one of the biggest urban renewal projects in Australian history – 20 years in the making and with design at its core.

I hope you enjoy the issue.

PHOTOGRAPHY KATHERINE GRIFFITHS