Robert Bevan writes in today’s Fin (p 50) about the (Un)loved Modern conference in Sydney next week, which will address “the care and protection of the undervalued architectural heritage of the 1950s to 1970s modernism”:
They represent architecture’s mid-life crisis — too young to be regarded as wise and venerable but old enough to have lost their gloss. [...] ¶ In Sydney, a proposed remodelling of the Bathurst Street headquarters of the Water Board will, in a telling episode of period favouritism, see its art deco building retained but its brutalost wing torn down. … NSW has demolished six winners of the Sulman Award for public architecture and others have an uncertain future.
This short-sightedness is a real tragedy. Hopefully the conference will help protect these buildings from greedy developers in future.