235 Riley Street Surry Hills NSW 2010

To paraphrase the City Council guidelines for Conservation Areas –
‘The old should be old and the new should be new’.

My concern relates to the infill buildings on Riley and Campbell Streets which according to the DA draw on the language of the Victorian terrace house.

235 Riley Street
The first and second levels of this new terrace are an uninspiring pastiche. However, the street level is a confusing mess. The front door is a fire door, the windows echo the ones above but are turned upside down, if this is a visual joke it is not funny just silly. Upside down windows were never part of the Victorian terrace house vocabulary.
The photo shown as reference is deceptively upside down.

Terrace houses define the character of this section of Riley Street with their rhythm of palisade fences but at 235 an empty gap is proposed. This ignores the pattern and continuity of the streetscape and the proposed space will fill with leaves and other detritus. The plans show fire stairs and a toilet behind the ground floor facade of this
faux terrace.

159 Campbell Street
A shallow facade tricked up with echoes of Victorian detailing conceals an open lobby/atrium. All that is needed is a glass wall recessed from the street that would allow the hotel and the row of terraces to predominate, there is no reason for an irrelevant fantasy.

This is a revised 2021 DA but the design philosophy remains incoherent.
These sham facades are just set design with no relevance to what lies behind where simple contemporary infills are all that is required.

I urge the council to insist on a solution that does not detract from the existing buildings and respects the integrity of the streetscape.

I concur with the comments above. The proposal for 235 Riley St, with the focus on arches (upside down or otherwise) actually reflects the existing building at 159 Campbell St which is deemed to be of detracting value. Why 235 Riley St is deemed to be of neutral value when its facade and scale is consistent with the row of terrace houses along the rest of the block is hard to understand; equally so why the detracting development at 159 Campbell is not being removed entirely. The fact that the owner's father built this extension in the 70s is not justification per se for keeping a variation of that building when it clearly lacks design merit and was built at a time when regulations were far less strict. I also urge council to reject this proposal for a more meritorious design which respects, instead of overwhelms, surrounding heritage built forms. The ugly monolith across the road that is the police centre is surely more than enough of building designs in the area which bear absolutely no regard for their surrounds.