Long-term vision within, with Malcolm Middleton
Malcolm is an architect and urban designer with over 35 years’ experience. He is the former Queensland Government Architect and former Queensland President of the Property Council of Australia. Malcolm has served on both the South Bank Design Advisory Panel and the Queensland Heritage Council, and was awarded a Life Fellowship to the Australian Institute of Architects in 2021, and the Order of Australia Medal in recognition of services to Architecture and Children’s Welfare Organisations in 2010.
What do you love about cities?
I guess it's the energy of a city that you want to tap into, and every city has a different kind of energy. That’s partly because of the physical nature of the city, but it's also what is happening in that city. Ultimately, many things happen in a city. So, energy, variety, and place ‒ all of those things are reasons that I really like cities
What changes have you seen in cities over the past 20 years that matter the most to you?
I think image sensibilities of cities have really arced up a lot over the last 20 years. Cities, particularly cities like Brisbane, that are seeking to be an Olympic city, have that kind of aspiration to be a real city, a real-world city, or a new world city as they like to coin it. This says a bit about how we feel about ourselves, that we perhaps don't feel we are quite real unless we are internationally recognized.
Tell us about a project you’ve worked on that has been most important to you?
I think without question, the project that has given me the greatest satisfaction is the Roma Street Parkland project. It's a big project, a big footprint, it was an excellent collaboration. It had a lot of politics in it and it was a transformation of worlds. It's still hidden away a bit, but the redevelopment of Roma Street, the demolition of the Transit Centre and the Cross River Rail precinct, in the longer term, it's an excellent backdrop now for all of that. During my 10 years in the Queensland Government Architect's office, the best piece of work we did without question was the Brisbane Strategy. Sadly, it was not government policy, but it is now in the public domain. It's available in the State Library of Queensland, a highly relevant piece of work, I think still, in fact, very relevant as we lead into the Olympic period. It was a very big collaboration with a lot of thought starters, creators of places and infrastructure and thinking, all brought together in a strong piece of efficacy for the city and some vision for the city.
To be a great ancestor for future generations, what does our sector need to focus on today?
To be a great ancestor, you have to have a long-term vision and you need to take the budget cycle out of short-term decision-making to get long term benefit. I noticed now that there's far less political pressure within the State Government now that there is a four-year cycle, and everybody knows when the next election will be. I think that's a step in the right direction, but it's only a small step and it's the cultural approach that goes with it. A lot of projects are having urban impact, but it's not obvious that it will have an urban impact so the people who implement the programs need a lot more understanding of the value of each program that they might be running. One of my other soap boxes is that there are not enough architects inside the government. We have a lot of planners, a lot of engineers and their role is accepted, and their contribution to policy is understood. But architects and urbanists, landscape architects are not commonly found. I think that's a real shame, it makes it a much harder challenge for people coming in to find an understanding of what they're there to do or when they get invited in.
“To be a great ancestor, you have to have a long-term vision and you need to take the budget cycle out of short-term decision-making to get long term benefit. ”
What's one piece of advice you would give to emerging urban leaders?
Well, you have to be patient. You've got to have passion, of course, but if you're not patient, you will eventually wear everyone out, including yourself. Everything you do builds on everything that you do. So you have to be patient and see that each part of what you do is part of the bigger building block of what your career might be, and it all contributes to it. Collaborating with others is also an essential component of being a designer. That nature of a collaborative environment is essential in any urban setting, there's no one place where you can do urban things and say, well, just go there and it's all done. It has to be collaborative structure and understanding, and being good at collaboration, not being frightened of it, is a really important issue.
Lastly, what is one of the urban challenges that we face?
Well, when you're thinking about urban challenges, you've always got to be thinking about the future and to think about the future, you must have a vision of what that is. You bring people to a place and when they get here have reasons for them to stay. It happened to me in Brisbane for various reasons. I came here for a short time and I didn't leave, and I've enjoyed my time here working and watching the city grow.
