Dichotomy of Landscape

Getting ready for bed after another evening of discussion about (not so) mundane architectural academia.  It has been a fantastic (I think I have been using that term a lot – sorry) day on the Gold Coast.

I woke up at 8:00 to head out on a tour of the Gold Coast with the convenor of the conference, Andrew, from Griffith University.  At 9:00 we met up with a couple from Montreal and a woman from Turkey and piled into a sedan decked out with Griffith paraphernalia and were off for a three and a half hour tour of the Gold Coast.  We headed south along Gold Coast Highway, being filled with history as we went.  Our first stop was Burleigh Heads, where we looked back on the towers of Surfers Paradise.

We then drove inland to Bond University (where a few conference proceedings will be held) and passed through the campus on the way to a fairly recent development called Emerald Lakes.  It is a phenomenal mess of post-modern mimicry, not only alluding to Mediterranean architecture, but presenting itself as some horrible rendered Disneyfication gone wrong – so wrong.  The crowning monument of the development being the replica of Michelangelo’s David standing staring out at Surfers Paradise.

From Emerald Lakes, we drove into the “hinterlands” to Hinze Dam.  It is a spectacular setting and we sat down for some coffee and to look out to the mountains of the Dividing Range across the lake.  After coffee we wandered down into a park space along the lake, which was pretty new and had some nice pavilions.  On the way back to the car park we were treated to a spectacular sight – a rainbow which formed in between the mountains.

 

On the trip back to Surfers Paradise we stopped by a golf course where kangaroos like to gather to graze – no one in the back of the car had been to Australia, so they were quite keen to see a kangaroo in nature.

We got back to the hotel around 12:15 and went to freshen up before heading out to the Q1 to meet for another tour, this time of high rises of Surfers Paradise.  A group of eight of us met at the base, purchased tickets, and took the lift up the tallest residential building in the world. 

 

At the top we were afforded 360˚ views of the area.  The weather had cleared earlier in the day, and we all seemed to enjoy the seemingly never ending views down the coast both north and south as well as east across the Pacific and west into the hinterlands.  After we had had our fill of views, we sat down for a chat about the (relatively brief) history of the urban landscape of the area with someone from Griffith (who was, himself, a recent transplant from Ghent, Belgium).  The tour continued around the tower before we headed back down to street level to walk around for an hour or so to see some of the oldest and most pivotal high rises in the Gold Coast’s history.

The tour wrapped up at the new ‘Soul’ development, and a few of us continued on to grab a bite to eat.  I ended up with our Belgium guide, two speakers from Turkey, and a young Boston transplant who is now a professor at Sydney Uni.  We had a nice Japanese lunch on the Esplanade right at the beach, and before we knew it, it was past 4:00.  From lunch, we hurried back to our hotels to freshen up before a large group of us reconvened in the lobby where many of us are staying at 5:00 to head over to the opening session of the conference, back at the Art Centre where the lecture was held last night.

About a dozen of us struck out just past 5:00 to make it to the opening session.  We arrive right before 5:30, to find the festivities already in full swing.  We grabbed our name tags, schedules, and bags filled with information and various other things, and began our mingling.  I caught up with some Sydney Uni people (including the person who ran the studio I was in last year) and met many, many more people not just from Australia, but around the globe, many of whom will be presenting in the next few days.

We were all pumped full of canapés, conversation, and a bit of liquor over the course of the next ninety minutes before we headed into the opening session.  I found a seat next to someone I had befriended at the Brisbane conference and the session began with welcomes and introductions.  From there, the program moved to an almost pecha kucha style presentation, with ten different conference presenters having five minutes or less to speak about their ideas on the title of the conference (Open) with the aid of one projected image.  It was a really neat experience, and it wasn’t long before 8:00 had come around and it was time for us to break for the night.

A large group of us making the walk back to Surfers Paradise (a 25 minute walk) ended up stopping for dinner on Chevron Island at a Thai Restaurant. The eight of us were shortly joined by four others, and we had rousing conversations fueled by new acquaintances, a hearty meal, and a bit of BYO – before we knew it, it was 10:0 0, and the restaurant booted us out to close.  The discussion continued all the way back to the hotel, and before we knew it, it was after midnight.  While I know all of you would be incredibly bored by the discussions had, for me it has been absolutely riveting and really quite great to be a part of chats which I have never had the opportunity to hear.

As my professor from Tulane told me after I found out I would be attending these conferences; the conference sessions are good to find out things, but the dinners and after hours conversations are what will really allow you to learn and make the connections which will carry you further.  I have no doubt he was 100% correct.