Sensational-Adelaide.com

Research hub's IQ coup
Brad Crouch From: Sunday Mail (SA) June 27, 2010 12:02am

The futuristic SA Health and Medical Research Institute.
Source: AdelaideNow
A POSSE of professors has been recruited to run the new SA Health and Medical Research Institute in a controversial new building expected to define 21st century Adelaide.

Ten of the nation's greatest minds - including former Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer - will oversee the $200 million SA Health and Medical Research Institute , to be built on North Tce's western end, adjacent to the planned $1.7 billion new Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The six-storey, "see-through" building - which on plans appears to float above street-level like a futuristic plastic cube - is expected to set the architectural tone for the new hospital.

Work on the 25,000sq m building is expected to start in February, creating up to 3000 jobs - about half during its construction - as the Government starts the mammoth task of winding down the RAH's current Frome Rd research and medical campus and transferring its work to the railyards site.

SA Scientist of the Year Professor John Hopwood will head the Institute Research Committee, whose members include Professor Frazer, who pioneered the cervical cancer vaccine. Other members are: at http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/sout ... 5884728782

Health Minister John Hill said about half of the institute's 675 researchers would be new to SA. "These are people who can inspire and guide the important work that will take place in this exciting new institute," Mr Hill said.

"The new, unified health and medical research institute. . . will help attract the best and brightest researchers from around the world and bring together the leading researchers already working here."

PJK1 wrote:Anyone know if there are plans to remove the brown building on the RHS of the photos posted by Xara? Likely something to do with railway signalling etc - A jarring visual blight that ideally would be razed.

Nort wrote:

PJK1 wrote:Anyone know if there are plans to remove the brown building on the RHS of the photos posted by Xara? Likely something to do with railway signalling etc - A jarring visual blight that ideally would be razed.

All the renders of the site include keeping that building there. If it is something to do with railway signalling though I would say that keeping it around is a good idea as long as you like having trains stay on the correct rails.

Professor wrote:I understand that the train control function will be moved elsewhere so hopefully that pillbox will also go.

Kaurna stoush over railyards

22 Jul 10 @ 12:01pm by Emily Charrison

WORK has come to a halt at the SA Health and Medical Research Institute as Aboriginal groups enter into a stoush with the State Government.

SA Health has stopped major earthmoving works while it awaits new authorisation to “damage, disturb or interfere” with the North Tce railyards site - an agreement required under the Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Consent to start the project, originally granted in January, was revoked earlier this month because SA Health could not secure Aboriginal monitors regularly on site, as required under the agreement.

But the Kaurna National Cultural Heritage Association said it needed more than two people to supervise the damage and look for any Aboriginal artefacts.

Association chairwoman Lynette Crocker said it was “impossible to have two monitors monitoring 10 or so trucks.”

“All it’s about is big business - it’s about the Kaurna land being further destroyed without permission of the traditional owners,” she said.

“The whole thing has been flawed right from the very beginning.

“And there’s no way we’re going to send two monitors on there with all those trucks going by to be in danger.”

Ms Crocker also lashed out at the government’s public consultation process because submissions closed this Thursday (July 22), a day before a consultation meeting with Aboriginal people.

She said the minor works now being carried out, namely scraping bitumen off a carpark, was a breach on the Act because consent was still pending.
\ Construction workers from Hindmarsh Development SA - the company building the $200 million health hub next to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital - moved into the area in May and will remain on-site until work is finished in December 2012, with the government vowing the project will be on time.

The project was launched last week by Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon, Health Minister John Hill and Adelaide Labor MP Kate Ellis.

A media release said the three parties “turned the first sod” last Tuesday (July 13), despite the works still awaiting approval by new Aboriginal Affairs Minister Grace Portolesi.

Mr Hill’s spokeswoman Ruth Awbery since told the City Messenger the event was staged in the bitumen carpark and had not breached the law.

Ms Awbery said SA Health hoped the authorisation to be granted within a week, and that the minor works would “not damage, disturb or interfere with any Aboriginal site, object or remains”.

She said the site had been used for “many decades” as a railyard, and would be “completely remediated” once the project is finished.