The Harder They Fall

It's often heartbreaking visiting James Lileks' site.

He currently has a collection chronicling Minneapolis' finest buildings. As he leads readers through its history and architecture the pay off comes with a photograph or a Google Earth image showing the building in situ today.

Sadly there's not going to be that much history of our city, the Gold Coast, left to explore as the very thing that made the city in the first place - property development - becomes the very thing that destroys it.

It was with some sadness that one read that one of the city's earliest hotels, The Iluka is destined for demolition and 57 storey skyscraper put in its place. The link is to the Iluka web site - destined to last as long as its hosting one presumes.


Yes, one does appreciate the irony of lamenting the arrival of a new high rise because it does away with another one, but you'd have to be a Gold Coaster to understand.

The first generation of Surfers Paradise hotels built between 1965-1980, are in danger of extinction and so to the unique charm and character that made the beachside suburb the unofficial capital of our fair city.

Where it might have been true once that the tall buildings were a major tourism driver, it would be fair to say replacing mid-20th architecture with 21st design is not going to solve the problems that Surfers Paradise has at the moment - no matter how nice the seashell inspired monolith that will replace The Iluka looks.


And that raises a fascinating observation that has been made here before - every notice how old buildings with highly detailed facades look much much better close up than modern buildings?

Modern buildings are designed to look good as scale model 'off the plan' sales aids, or viewed at a distance. Once you get up close they're all the same - vast sheets of cold, soulless glass.

You never really engage with a modern building, they're museum pieces before their time - you can look, but don't touch.

Pity.

Nick and Nora took some photographs a couple of weeks back of a few of the older buildings around Surfers Paradise to have at least some photographic record before they too succumb to the developer's wrecking ball.

Those photographs and what history we can glean will be featured here over the next few weeks.

BTW apologies for the extra small picture of The Iluka when it was new. It's been taken as a thumbnail from the National Library of Australia's web site. There is a larger picture available online from the Gold Coast City Council web site, but that site's image server has failed. If the site is back online in the next few days, I'll replace it with a larger image. Don't forget to click on the first to images for larger pictures you can view in detail.