Letter from Sydney

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2000 by E. M. Farrelly

And all this time we thought it was just a smart downtown postcode. Now Sydney 2000 has a whole new meaning, being indelibly tattooed on our spiritual vellum as the signature of the 27th Olympiad.

Sure, other things have been happening. Renzo Piano's high-rise nears completion; more than one can say right now for Foster's (the architect, not the beer) which appears deathly pale. The standing debate over the Museum of Contemporary Art at West Circular Quay -- directly opposite the pariah-turned-glam East Circular Quay development -- has inched forward with the City's announcement of a limited competition involving Rafael Moneo (Madrid), Francesco Venezia (Naples), Sauerbruch & Hutton (Berlin/London), Nonda Katsalidis (Melbourne) and Richard Francis Jones (Sydney). But there's no doubting it. The biggest tent in town over recent months has been the Olympics'.

After seven preparatory years and legions of cautionary tales, you'd have to say we were braced for it. Habitually feral Sydney became docile under a range of draconian rules which saw building sites shut down or internalized, buses and trains commandeered, on-street parking banned, streets closed and city servicing relegated to the wee hours. School holidays and daylight saving were brought forward holus-bolus and commuters warned of hefty transport delays. Universities closed for the duration. Businesses took early Christmas. Thousands left town. As with Y2K, the most FAQ in lifts and taxis was the where-will-you-be-when question.

And as with Y2K, the fact was a whole lot more congenial than the anticipation. Of course, Atlanta's was an easy act to follow, with its debts and disappointments, piled up transport catastrophes and dozens of daily bomb threats -- as well as the real thing. Sydney too had its share of bad news stories in the buildup; train derailments, press strikes, ticketing controversies, vague whiffs of corruption. Retrospectively, a cynic might see the entire exercise as an orchestrated hosing-down of expectations. If so, it worked.

The site itself was an unlikely one for Sydney's Olympic-Park-to-be. Comprising a disused abattoir and brick-pit deep in the rust belt, Homebush Bay was unlinked by either public transport or proximity to anything approximating urban fabric. The soil was toxic (to everything except an endangered species of frog which just happened to wear the national colours); there was a river, but not one you could seriously suggest as a major transport link; and it was a long, long way to the nearest latte.

Step by step, however, the soil was scrubbed, the rail spur built, the masterplan drawn. Then there was the usual architectural suck-fest while the goodies were dished out, including the station, the stadium collection, the dome, superdome, arenas and dozens of smaller venues. No-one was surprised when the first and biggest commissions went to Philip Cox and Andrew Anderson's purpose-formed alliance, along with the first masterplan. But heads have rolled in the years since, including that of the alliance. The plan changed hands, and shape, several times; its primary gesture as built, George Hargreaves' backgammon-patterned Olympic Boulevard, being eventually superimposed mid-construction. It wasn't exactly a textbook development process. It wasn't cheap, even on official figures, and the true budget blow-out will probably never be known. But it did happen, and happen on time.

Meanwhile, in the city centre, a similar, largely unofficial makeover was under way. In the five years leading up to the Olympics, the city saw more than four and a half billion dollars of redevelopment. While other cities suffered the doughnut syndrome, in Sydney city the graphs kept going up and up. Residential numbers tripled and commercial office space boomed, along with tourism, food and retail. Several city parks were completely reworked and the primary streets repaved in bluestone (instead of asphalt) before being fully kitted out with street trees, public art, banner poles, street furniture, lights, signage, kiosks and flowers. Plans and contingency plans were prepared, tested and revised.

In the event, to be honest, it was a breeze. Like Christmas without the stress. The weather was near-perfect, notwithstanding the odd electrical storm, the organization smooth and the populace pacific. The opening ceremony, although obscure to Americans, was declared a triumph, ending on Cathy Freeman's unforgettable image as a figure from some Promethean rock painting. For two weeks after, at half a big-screen dozen Live Sites around the city, life was a continuous party. Live coverage dominated every shop, office and restaurant throughout the entire metropolitan area. Normally quiet neighbourhoods hummed at 3 and 4am. Screens in financial-district bars, usually devoted to share results, were diverted for the purpose and staid department stores offered free access to hero-mail. Ticket-seekers queued happily for hours, generating a record percentage sold, and all over town ant-tracks developed as huge crowds threaded peaceably between venues and transport nodes. Throughout, city traffic was serene. The trans port system carried several times its normal load with apparent ease, and in place of road-rage, tolerance and friendliness became the norm. Weird. As a press official quipped, 'who would have expected the Olympics to solve the City's traffic problem?'