Today (July 18) marks the official start of a competition process to find a design for the current Royal Adelaide Hospital site. I am officially excited.

In five months time, when the winner is revealed - not that it will necessarily ever be built, we now learn - I want to be shocked, surprised, dazzled and enthralled. 

Anything less and I will feel it's been a pointless exercise. We can do mediocrity in Adelaide quite well. This is a time for modernity.  

The RAH site, given its location, deserves to be treated with a development that is inspiring, culturally enriching and a structure that becomes an instant iconic landmark in Adelaide. If regional or provincial cities such as East Lansing, Michigan; Baku, Azerbaijan; Guangzhou, China; Glasgow, Scotland; Zaragoza and Bilbao, Spain, and Wolfsburg, Germany can appreciate and live with groundbreaking contemporary architecture, surely we can?