http://www.aila.org.au/sea-change/
Embassy of the Drowned Nations - OCULUS, Sydney
Bob Earl, Shahreen Alford, Simon Bond, Liam Butt, Katie Cooper, Daniel Firns, Ali Gaunt, Rosie Krauss, Ben Nacard, Simon Trick
This stunning visual concept brings the boldness back into a vision of Sydney in 2030+. It presents an international response to Sydney as Australia’s only truly global city sitting on the western edge of Oceania and on the southern shores of the Asia-Pacific nations. In the background of the visualisation sits the two previous built environment icons of outstanding global significance and instant recognition.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge designed and built in the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Sydney Opera House designed and built in the optimistic years of the post-world war two baby boomers in the 1950s and 1960s. Both of these previous Sydney harbour icons attracted great controversy and defied the conventional engineering and architectural wisdom of the time.
This bold venture, the Embassy of Drowned Nations, extends a hand of connection and friendship as the Harbour Bridge and Opera House did in the last century. By providing a meeting place and forum for adapting to climate change it opens the debate on conceptual engagement with other drivers of global environmental change, particularly around population and resource use. The bold vision of the Embassy of Drowned Nations is much more than a lament for a lost past; it’s an iconic engagement in a brighter future through building a world-class place for welcoming and regenerating the spirit of human adaptation to global change.
