Telstra Tower and other ideas ripe for reinvention

Posted on 17 December, 2019

Whether it’s a giant syringe or the first sign of home, the space-age spire on top of Black Mountain is ripe for reinvention.

Last month, Chief Minister Andrew Barr declared that he was “open for ideas” to transform the tired landmark that has loomed over our city since 1980.

Challenge accepted, as 90 of our city’s leading thinkers and innovators gathered at the first Salon Canberra Creative Ideas Forum last week.

Telstra Tower has languished since the revolving restaurant (or, revolting restaurant, depending on your point of view) closed in 2013.

At the last ACT election, the Sex Party called for it to be torn down or transformed, labelling it a “useless eyesore” and an “ugly, dated and useless piece of architecture”.

Is demolition the only answer? Other cities have taken an out-of-the-box approach to attract tourists to their towers.

Sydney Tower features a 4D cinema, Tokyo’s Mori Tower boasts an aquarium and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower has a thrill ride. How could we revamp our city’s steeple?

Forum participants broke up into four self-selecting groups to consider the conundrum: bureaucrats, boffins, creatives and philosophers.

Jamie Hladky, John Guida. Photo: Ashley St George/Pew Pew Studio.

The bureaucrats liked the idea of transforming the tower into a place of respect and gathering for the Ngunnawal people. Although one wag suggested it would make the perfect panic room.

The philosophers, made up primarily of property developers and industry consultants, wanted a bungee jump, cable car or zip line direct to Parliament House.

The creatives, surprisingly, wanted to hand it over to a developer to reimagine as luxury apartments (with the profits to be shared with the community).

The boffins, less surprisingly as they were predominantly academics, said they needed to undertake market research first.

(L-R) Kerry-Ann Hugo, Dr Mel Douglas. Photo: Ashley St George/Pew Pew Studio.

Other interesting ideas that flew in from left field. A mindfulness centre where visitors could switch off from telecommunications. A dark restaurant, an art gallery or live music venue. A space museum or giant water slide to the lake’s edge.

It was a fun and fast experiment, but one that illustrated the power of peering over the fence and learning the best lessons from other industries.

The secret to creative ideas is to look at problems through a different prism, the audience heard. Speaker Dr David Court, founder of Australia’s first business school for creative people, Compton School, talked about his determination to apply Hollywood’s ‘greenlight’ process to medical research.

David, a board director of Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, is investigating how the ‘wise crowd’ approach that has created a century of cinema classics can attract investment in innovative medical ideas.

(L-R) Dr David Court, Piers Grove, Médy Hassan, Professor Joan Leach, Associate Professor Dr Inger Mewburn. Photo: Ashley St George/Pew Pew Studio.

Piers Grove, co-founder of satire site Betoota Advocate, grew up surrounded by architects and this thinking informed the design of his business.

Just as an architect creates a house around a client’s needs, the Betoota was built around a question: “Who is our reader and what do they need?”.

Piers found the right answer and five years later the Betoota Advocate has two million weekly readers.

(L-R) Anna Trundle, Beatrice Smith, Kathryn Vincent. Photo: Ashley St George/Pew Pew Studio.

Professor Joan Leach, Director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science, talked about the important role of constraint in creativity.

Jazz, for example, may sometimes seem to teeter on the edge of chaos, but it has clear rules that every musician must understand before they can begin to improvise.

Associate Professor Dr Inger Mewburn, educator and author of ‘The Thesis Whisperer’ blog, debunked the idea that only naturally creative people will come up with good ideas.

Inger pointed to one of her favourite research papers, Social Origins of Good Ideas, published by Ronald Burt in 2003. Burt explored the nature of discussion networks among managers, identifying two types: bridges and clusters.

(L-R) Brett Roantree, Hoa Luu, Jo Metcalfe. Photo: Ashley St George/Pew Pew Studio.

Most people discussed ideas with their immediate work colleagues—within clusters—but relatively few people would act as ‘bridgers’ and talk to colleagues across clusters.

People who took up the challenge of being bridgers were “more at risk of having more good ideas,” Inger said. The risk for ‘clusterers’ is clear. “Within a discussion cluster, information, beliefs and behaviours tend to become more homogenous over time,” Inger explained.

So, seek out people who think differently to you. Become a bridger between clusters. As Inger, quoting Ronald Burt, reminded the room: “Creativity is an import-export business”.

Whether we’re building a satirical paper, a network of medical researchers or considering a new use for Canberra’s spire, we must cast our net far and wide.

Feature image: Martin Ollman via Facebook.