The proper basis for a marriage is mutual misunderstanding - Oscar Wilde
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Apple is helping destroy Australian cultural heritage
IN A MOVE DUBBED AS cultural vandalism, Apple has been named in a cunning plan to knock down an historic landmark building in downtown Melbourne for one of its tacky stores.
The Art Deco style Lonsdale House will be flattened to make way for one of Apple's shrines to over-priced computers and consumer electronics gismos.
For those who come from Europe and might not understand, Art Deco buildings are treasured down under and in places like Napier, New Zealand, which has the largest concentration of the architecture in that country and makes a fortune from Art Deco tourism.
To be mildly fair to Apple, Steve Jobs' is not going to ride an Ibullodozer over Melbourne's historic landmark.
The villian of the piece is Darren Steinberg, head of property at developer Colonial Global Asset Management. However it is Apple that is going to be the flagship tenant and we assume that the layout of the Apple store will fulfill the design specifications of the maestro Steve Jobs himself.
An Apple store appeared as the "hero store" in the artist's interpretation of the completed project and it does look like an traditional Ibox design. Basically it's the same as Apple's store in Sydney.
In the artist's impression, the Apple store takes up several floors and faces the street, with passers-by able to see straight into the store and a suspended holy Apple symbol bearing down on pedestrians demanding their worship.
Not surprisingly anyone with any sense of taste, and apparently they have found a few of them in Melbourne, is incandescent with rage.
Robin Grow, president of the Art Deco & Modernism Society, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he is vehemently opposed to it.
Grow said Lonsdale House needed to be saved to preserve Melbourne's cultural heritage. Colonial had told him it had planned to include Apple as its main tenant to make a statement.
Apparently Lonsdale House was not heritage listed on the state register but it was listed as grading B by the City of Melbourne on their planning scheme .
However the council didn't give a flying fig about the building and did not bother trying to protect it. This apparently was because the Myer district redevelopment promised to make a lane wider for trucks.
Apparently Steve Jobs hates the past which put up buildings before he was born. He tried for ages to knock down an historic Spanish Colonial Revival 14-bedroom mansion in California before giving up and flogging it to angel investor Gordon Smythe.
We wonder if history will treat his sterile glass cube Apple store buildings as kindly. µ
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I was working on the top floor of Lonsdale House in 1971 when my future wife began as the receptionist - just over a year later we were (and still are) married.
Sadly they had not spent any money on the building decades before I got there and nothing has been spent since.
Dr Errol, your lack of worldly culture is showing, you are obviously confusing Sydney with Melbourne.
what is the connection between an innercity dump and culture?
Since when did Australia have Culture?
Maybe Apple could hire some Aboriginal
spear chuckas, as store greeters?
Disgraceful if they go ahead with it. But then such an action wouldn't be out of the norm for them to do so. It's a reflection of what they where and what they have become. They where once solid, stylish and unique. But they are now tacky and cheap, much like what they wish to build. The store shall be way over priced for what they are getting as well I suspect ;)
Lonsdale House is a fantastic old building and really stands out as an example of why Melbourne is such a beautiful city. I'm glad to see covereage of the issue here, as the local media have largely ignored this ongoing process of turning Melbourne into another tacky Sydney-clone
Apple does not need to help destroy Australia, you have a bountiful amount of Liberal Socialist politicians and hacks in that country that is doing a fine job at it just as they are tearing apart the USA right now.
As far as the building goes, it is probably some piece of crap about ready to fall down anyway. I see it all the time here in the states.
Tell me do they have money, you can do a lot with money these days.
What exactly is so special about Art Deco? What ever it is, why are we not building more buildings in that style or any other stile from the past? Cities that are after truism should be looking at construction of new buildings that don’t look cheap, nasty and cause depressed if someone looks at them for too long (what’s not too like). But not demolishing old buildings that no one wonts to utilise to make room for new one is not the solution.
Why can't everyone see how evil Job's Mob is?
Nick has a much deeper relationship with Apple than most fanbois: they might only think about the object of their desire once in a while. Nick feeds on his hate every few hours.
Lucky the developer didn't use Mr. Farrell's picture, otherwise the headline would have been
"Farrell is helping destroy Australian cultural heritage."
Given the more infrequent updating of this site, I wonder if advertisers would appreciate this sort of page-view bait.
Oh look, no ads here. Maybe you should start splitting up these silly season stories onto multiple pages to get your views up.
In trying to save this elegant and iconic building, we met with the representatives of the developers. They made it quite clear that Apple was to be the key tenant and that they wanted to make a 'hero statement' - whatever that is. Of course the owners are not going to admit to the press that they have a firm deal. The other part of the story in the SMH not reported was that the Apple store will be likely to destroy the business of many other Apple re-sellers in the CBD, as happened in Syney.
Robin Grow
The world is changing every second, Some places shall be historic and others not..
www.setordelta.com
very bad writing
I doubt you would get permission to demolish a building of that quality even in the UK, which is not short of art deco architecture. Is that the rustle of good old fashioned Aussie wheel grease I hear?
"I'm no fan of Apple with regards to locking users in and behaving badly, but this story is cr@p. Apple were put onto the VISUALS for this and haven't even been spoken to (let alone arranged a lease) regarding this place."
So when do we expect a lawsuit from Apple landing on the developers? After all, using Apple trademarks in the "visuals" is probably trademark infringement of some kind, and we know how stroppy Apple are about their brand.
Oh really? No lawsuit?
I'm no fan of Apple with regards to locking users in and behaving badly, but this story is cr@p. Apple were put onto the VISUALS for this and haven't even been spoken to (let alone arranged a lease) regarding this place. They said that Apple would be an ideal tenant, but you've taken the original story and mashed it up to suit your own ends.
Everyone knows that Apple has been involved in the project right from the start at least here in Melbourne. The developer stuck the Apple box design on the original plans. It is unlikely that he would have got the support or the cash if Apple was not involved in the project. It seems that you are just seeing what you want to see in the SMH article. The developer is not going too say anything that Apple does not want him to say. However news reports have been a bit clearer. Farrell has it more or less right.
I don't care, the building is really ugly better flattened.
If you bother reading the linked article you'll find the following quote
"We're in discussions with a number of major international tenants, but at this stage there are no tenants committed to the project because we haven't formally started the leasing campaign yet," Steinberg said.
"We'll be looking for an iconic retailer and Apple would certainly fit that description."
So we have a developer looking to build a shopping center, one tenant of which MIGHT be Apple IF they can convince them to sign WHEN they start looking to lease space. Hardly a case of Apple destroying Australia's cultural heritage is it?
I am disappoint