What is wrong with this photograph?

Some city-planning genius has just placed this popular public sculpture – the infelicituosly named “Illumicube”, 1988, by Kerry Simpson – in a nicely asymmetrical relation to the super-symmetrical eastern facade of the Canberra Centre. And, with even greater vulgarity, it’s about five meters from the WBG sacred geometry of the Ainslie Avenue land axis.

While we’re not an advocate of the aesthetic merits of the work itself, or the architecture it adorns, it now has a longish history in the Canberra landscape, and more people seem to like it than dislike it. And it’s the most unlikely memorial in this city of dismal memorials. At least nobody died to provide the excuse for its commission. Its sound-responsive lighting innards now interact sweetly with the pedestrian crossing buttons. For better or worse (for richer or poorer, adding insult to injury) whatever we thought of its aesthetics, how offensive to the eye is its placement? Minus 9 to the planning person concerned…