Cartoon by Daze
While Dr Gruen’s substantial demolition of any economic case for a stadium at Macquarie Point has been broadly canvassed in the media of late, his review of the Visual Impact assessment process has received little press.
We are regularly afforded a set of images that have, so far, largely gone unchallenged. Images that have been heavily manipulated to disguise the visual imposition of a structure of this scale on its surroundings.
Some of these AI generated ‘photographs’ are taken from a vantage point, such as a worm’s eye view, that lessens the visual impact and the sense that the stadium, at 54m high, looms over the historic structures around it.
They’re often carefully cropped to delete any nearby structures whose heights are known and could be used for comparison. Furthermore, they’re coloured in such a way as to ‘fade’ the dome into the sky above.