Up in arms.
And now let us turn to the extremely divisive topic of modern architecture. Are you a fan or do you find anything built after 1950 an utter abomination? Do Frank Gehry’s swoops and undulations make you shudder with glee or recoil in disgust?
Is the name Zaha Hadid taste like honey on your lips or bitter gall?
Well, the world’s current most passionate, volatile debate spilled into Sydney’s typically passive locals dug in on both sides over the $3m refurbishment of the Coogee Surf Lifesaving Club.
What was once a simple yellow brick has turned fabulous (in the author’s opinion) but the man who paid for it, New South Wales treasurer Dominic Perrottet, is infuriated and says it now looks “like a massive microwave.”
Continuing, he added, “In the lead-up to the 2017 budget I stood inside that stunning clubhouse and announced new funding to upgrade it and make it more accessible. This isn’t what I had in mind. It’s possible I said the old clubhouse was good enough to frame, but I didn’t mean literally. We have to stop turning icons into eyesores. Buildings like this occupy public spaces that belong to everyone. That’s why beauty in architecture is so important. The buildings we build should complement the beauty of their surroundings. Our city deserves better and we must do better.”
Some have found the facelift so disturbing that an online petition has been set up demanding the original architecture be restored.
Coogee Surf Life Saving Club president Todd Mison, however, has slapped back, telling Perrottet they didn’t ask for the money in the first place, it was just given, and that he loves the re-design. “I can only go on what I’ve heard, but I stand outside that club literally everyday and the feedback is predominantly positive from both club members and passersby. I think the way they’ve blended the old downstairs portico, which has been left in situ, with the contemporary, is amazing.”
Mike Harris, a landscape architecture academic at the University of New South Wales, said, “The (redesign) doesn’t look impressive, even for a modernist apologist like myself. But if the original ever had any architectural merit it has been modified beyond recognition – a not uncommon incremental process over 100 years.”
Coogee local Marty Doyle said, “I reckon it’s gross.”
But now to the most important critic of all.
You.
What is your informed opinion?
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
It’s shit. They should get their money back. It doesn’t even have a defrost option.
Love Gehry esp guggenheim bilbao, and Hadid out of this world, but agree with the ‘microwave’ comment here
Well everybody used to think the Sydney Opera House was a piece of shit!
You can. Its only the manufacturer who advises against it. Its like trampolines that come with a warning against flips.
Badass.
I luv it when u luv it.
They should have upgraded Wedding Cake Island ( with Dynamite )and created another decent inner city surf spot , though it did gives us Greg Day ……
Anyway I once drank free beer at a Tracks Party at the Coogee Bay Hotel , burning the Midnight Oil
Well there’s always the Bomby!
Must be a secret spot ?
Great image ….. just goes to show blokes hanging out , just like today , still waiting for waves at Coogee ?
It’s not the worst upgrade I’ve ever seen.
Kinda like BLM, climate change and Covid
The old building didn’t take advantage of it’s view…
Not sure what makes the new version so abhorrent.
It’s like a girl that no one in particular found attractive and she had a Made Up day and she looks different.
After two productive years spent sinking pots on the back deck at Currumbin Vikings, I saw amazing opportunities for our own surf clubs. Would have been more beneficial to touch up the regulations and open the doors up and down the coast. A far more effective use of time/resources and same effect as the ol pork barrel… Happy voters but also plied with cold beer.
Sharkitecture.
Jim Seals and Dash Croft both were married to black women. In the late Sixties and Seventies the Bahai Faith influenced the work of both artist and music you bear witness too.
We have a great Bahai temple here
We call it the tit on the hill https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
It looks great from where I’m sitting.
Yuk. They clearly did not consult any of Sydney’s many thousands of homosexuals in redesigning this. There should be glory holes built into every room.
Let’s be honest, before and after are two different versions of shit. Give me vernacular architecture, a couple of goats and a right hand point break any day.
This is the most important surf adjacent issue since the brutal attack on dry robe using ocean swimmers in Ireland
It’s gross. They even put a ‘clock’ on it, it almost looks like a fashion designer watch band.
It’s just more in the slow death of surfing’s original soul, along with soft tops, the Wsl, hordes of newbies, wave tanks, and Lenny and Laird.
P.S. In my recent S. Cal. wanderings, (san Diego mostly), I’m totally impressed with the Spanish influence on some of the houses–beautifull arched windows and doors, Spanish tile roofs and colors– soullful.
It’s like tearing one of those down and building a box.
You should drive your car off a cliff on your next one ya jabbering fucking nitwit
Or a Tudor….. kinda funny around SB…..near the Biltmore they tore down an all glass modern home and replaced it with, a small Craftsman Style. Down the street, someone builds a glass modern home, next to a Tudor on the beach. all 10 mil at least. Never understood looking at SB ocean though, its ususally gray and windy. Not Byron Bay or even La Jolla.
Something to be said for building codes I guess.
For what it’s worth, I think the integration of the clock was a compulsory aspect of the design. As in; “You can do what you like, but it’s got to have a clock on it”
The clock upgrade at the local SLSC was based on a red, supposedly LED, system. That faded after about two weeks of facing the morning sun. So now, no one can read it from more than about 10′ away.
The exact same fucking clock from the old facade wtf?!?!?
Cultures were meant to be crushed