We asked a collection of prominent architects for their take on the controversial plan to redesign one of Sydney's most cherished and tranquil landmarks

Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens and Woolloomooloo. Photograph: Rudi Van Starrex/Getty Images

Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens have been evolving ever since they threw open their iron gates in June 1816 under the "tasteful direction of Mrs Macquarie". As early as the 1860s, areas of the tidal flat at Farm Cove were being filled in to enlarge and improve the gardens. Then there was James Barnet’s gargantuan Garden Palace (some 400 metres long and boasting the sixth-largest dome in the world) that resulted in a major levelling of the landscape, before burning to the ground in a flaming wreck in 1882.

But one doubts that any of the changes over the past 198 years have raised so much ire as the draft masterplan for the area announced earlier this week. Former PM and self-appointed aesthete Paul Keating didn’t hold back, referring to the plan as an "atrocity", saving most of his criticism for the proposed viewing platform at Mrs Macquarie's Chair and the $80m five-star "garden hotel" planned for above the existing car park in Sir John Young Crescent....Continue Reading

> via The Guardian