The old Royal Adelaide Hospital site is perhaps the most vexed and vexing question Adelaide faces today – this fortnight on InDaily Design, SA’s design luminaries will weigh in with their views; today: the West End Association’s Andrew Wallace.

Andrew Wallace, West End Association president

The relocation of the Royal Adelaide Hospital provides us with an opportunity to consider the role and relationship of the Parklands – an opportunity we haven’t enjoyed since the adaption of the Hackney Tram Barns and construction of the National Wine Centre.

First and foremost, what needs to be remembered is that this site is park land, not a conventional development site. It is not a space for residential development – even as adaptive re-use – as has been the case with other disused hospitals around the state or country. A public hospital is a major enterprise which extends far beyond wards and operating theatres, and this project requires a major rethink about a whole precinct rather than any single building.

The hospital enjoys a prime position adjacent to the Botanic Gardens, east end, and the university and cultural precinct along North Terrace. If sensitively handled, the site has the potential to link all three and draw the somewhat lonely Wine Centre closer to the centre of the city or conversely extend the cultural boulevard further east.

I’d encourage you to walk around the site. What becomes evident even on the first walk is the potential to develop links through the landscape that celebrate the importance of our natural and built heritage. That points to some future uses of the site.

Other Options for the Royal Adelaide Hospital Site

• Brendon Harslett – Turn the RAH site into open space, use it for festivals
• Nick Tridente – Close Frome Road, extend the cultural boulevard

With my magic fiscal wand, firstly I would demolish a large percentage of the site, retaining only the beautiful heritage-listed buildings to the south, centre, and east. The opportunity then exists to extend the Botanic Garden, complementing the elegant 19^th-century landscape with a contemporary botanic garden that celebrates our natural landscape – a fertile plane on the edge of a desert; a garden with gums trees, not plane trees; native wetland, not boating lakes.

We have the opportunity to physically link the somewhat-landlocked Ayres House on North Terrace with the Palm House, and further afield to Hossein and Angela Valamanesh’s exquisite Ginkgo Gate, then over to the Barr Smith Library, creating a new pedestrian route linking the east end to the cultural precinct west and the Wine Centre east.

A new garden that interprets our natural environment would be a great setting for an institution (I could call it a Museum of Adelaide, but that might be inviting trouble) that interprets the many layers of the lived history of our city, the stories of its citizens and its built fabric. Or a centre for contemporary design and art taking the strain off the Art Gallery of South Australia and exhibiting future creative thinking.

Finally, as the site is quite free of residents, it’s the perfect place for permanent infrastructure to support events and music, enabling a year-round enjoyment of this new public space. If we get this right, North Terrace could lay claim to being a truly great long street from one end to another – a space that celebrates our landscape, layers of inhabitation and future.