From the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932), the city is divided in two by its famous harbor and to the north by the Hawkesbury River, which circles around the back of Sydney and limits the Cumberland Plain, joining the Pacific Ocean at Broken Bay. To the south is Botany Bay, which was proposed as the original site of settlement and later discarded because it lacked a reliable source of fresh water; beyond it, the Illawarra Escarpment shuts the city off to the south, and on the west, the escarpment of the Blue Mountains bars the way to the inland. Sydney is imprisoned by its geography.

The hard Hawkesbury sandstone tabletop on which the city rests has been deeply cut into by water, lifted, and then partly submerged and tilted up at its ocean edge; Port Jackson and Middle Harbour, once separate harbors with their own outlets, are now merged into one extensive harbor that breaks through to the ocean between two lofty heads a little over a mile apart. Sydney occupies a difficult if alluring site, hidden from the oceanside by its narrow entrance.

Following the revolt of the American colonies in 1776, at the suggestion of Joseph Banks, Botany Bay was selected for the site of a new penal settlement to replace what had been lost. The institution was founded in 1788 by 1,487 souls who reached Australia in 11 ships after a prolonged voyage. A little over half their number were convicts. Captain Phillip, the naval officer in charge of the enterprise, selected a cove 8 kilometers from the entrance on the south shore for the settlement because it possessed the best springwater, and its depth permitted his ships to anchor close to the shore. The developing township was named after British Home Secretary Thomas Townsend, Lord Sydney.

Sydney began as a collection of tents and huts. Organized along military lines, it soon acquired a makeshift, disorderly aspect that provoked successive governors to propose orderly town plans that were resisted by the inhabitants on the principle that the example of civic order in architecture would inspire social discipline and respect.

A small settlement sprang up on the west shore of Sydney Cove known today as The Rocks because it was built against a rocky ridge, one of two that framed the site. The early buildings were primitive: Bricks were laid with clay or mud, the native timber was cranky and iron-hard, and only the she-oak provided fine roof shingles. The Government House, a modest two-story dwelling in a plain Georgian style on the east side of the cove, was occupied by Governor Phillip in June 1789 and was the first building of importance. Walls were whitewashed for additional protection, giving the settlement the air of a Mediterranean village.

During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Australian architecture faithfully mirrored stylistic developments, as it followed the succession of English styles: Georgian, then Regency, followed by Gothic Revival, Victorian, and a diluted version of Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. American influence increased after the gold rush, especially in commercial and domestic architecture, causing a split in the sourcing of style influences. The esteem with which such mimicry was greeted depended largely on its fidelity to the original. Architecture was appreciated according to how well it reproduced English models and had an important nostalgic function to re-create a New World version of Old England. Local political and historical factors, the tyranny of distance (which delayed the taking up of new styles), the unavailability of materials, and shortages of skilled craftsmen forced innovation and together distanced Australian architecture from its stylistic models, helping sound a false note of independence. Until recently, the measure of architectural quality has been fidelity of interpretation, not idiosyncratic originality.

Mortimer Lewis (1796–1879), who arrived in Sydney in 1829, was typically schizophrenic in his choice of style, moving fluently between classical and Gothic. An adept at Gothic Revival, this did not prevent him from applying Greek Revival to the courthouse at Darlinghurst, which was his finest essay. He supervised the military-Gothic Government House (1845), designed and unsuitably oriented to the northern hemisphere by Edward Blore in England. It supplied a political symbol, an architectural climax, and a harbor focus for the city until the Sydney Opera House (1973) replaced it.

In 1842, wild land speculation led to a collapse of the money market and brought ruin to many people. Following a period of considerable prosperity and optimism, it hit the pastoral economy hard and brought colonial building to a halt. In 1851, the discovery of gold west of Sydney altered the complexion and mood of Australian architecture, bringing with it a new expansionism.

In the decade after 1841, Sydney’s population jumped by 14,267 to 44,240. By 1901, half a century later, it would be 481,830. Sydney expanded to the south and west as the wealth of the gold fields flowed back to it. The early Victorian period started innocently enough, incorporating Gothic for ecclesiastical work and schools and classical for public buildings. Saint Andrew’s Anglican cathedral by Edmund Blacket was consecrated in 1868, having been finished in stages. A vastly busy William Wardell commenced St. Mary’s Cathedral beside Hyde Park in 1865. Commercial buildings set out to catch the eye of customers by what might be called a potpourri style of fanciful frippery. By 1860, terrace houses began to be built in large tracts spreading out from and surrounding the city center.

The Victorian period was notable for the rise of ornament and the blurring of architectural fashions. It was a period of grand public buildings. Sydney’s General Post Office (1894) was commenced in 1864 by James Barnet, and Town Hall (1888) by J.H. Wilson set an example for the richer banks and commercial buildings that were to follow. The boom style of the 1880s, Italianate, which touched many residential buildings, had its origin in the English fascination with Romantic traditions and the picturesque. The application of Italianate style to commercial buildings led to the mass production of cast- iron columns and beams, whereas domestic architecture acquired decorative trims, gabled roofs, corner towers, and bull-nosed verandas. The florid phase of High Victorian design, which reached its peak in the 1880s, ended with the 1893 depression, which was sparked by a financial collapse three years earlier in Argentina.

In the 1880s, four stories was the rule for ornate office buildings built with traditional stone and brick exterior walls. The first Otis-type passenger lift was installed in the Farmer’s Store (1881). The effect of lifts soon became evident, and by 1892 there were several buildings reaching 10 to 12 stories. Some towers, such as the Lands Department Building (1890) by James Barnet on Bent Street, rose well over 33 meters. Skyscraping got off to a shaky start with Spain and Cosh’s Culwalla Chambers (1912), which rose to a height of 52 meters and frightened the city into enacting a height limit of 46 meters, a limit that survived until 1957.

The Australian domestic version of Queen Anne Revival consisting of terra-cotta roofing tiles and exposed deep red bricks was called “Federation.” Substantial Federation and Arts and Crafts residences were built in the northern harborside suburbs for the upper-middle class in Mosman and Cremorne, whereas the lower-middle and working classes were housed at Haberfield and Dacey Gardens Estate (Daceyville) west and south of the city.

An outbreak of the bubonic plague caused by poor sanitation led to the reconstruction of port facilities; new standardized wharf structures, such as the Walsh Bay finger wharfs and Woolloomooloo Deep Sea Wharf; and a seawall barrier to prevent rats from coming ashore during the first two decades of the century.

After winning the competition for Australia’s capital, Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937), who had previously been Frank Lloyd Wright’s office manager in Chicago, settled in Australia. He planned and established the suburb of Castlecrag, where he later built a small cluster of seven houses. His ideas on integrating nature and architecture and his reverence for the native flora produced a unique result.

Wyldefel Gardens (1936), by W.A.Crowl and John Brogon, and Prevost House (1937) at Bellevue Hill, by Sydney Ancher (1904–78), signaled the arrival of modern architecture in Sydney. Wyldefel consisted of 20 terraced garden apartments on either side of a cascading central garden and copied a housing scheme that existed outside Oberammergau, Bavaria. The apartments had flat roofs, round corner glazing, steel windows, and concrete frames. The nautical-style Prevost House was a compact version of Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House (1930) at Brno.

The former City Mutual Life Building (1936), an Art Deco design by Emil Sodersten, was the first building in Sydney to be fully air-conditioned. It used a serrated zigzag window treatment and was the most impressive and innovative building at the time. The 1920s and 1930s were eras that saw the building of huge atmospheric cinemas with streamlined interiors in the American style, an example of which is the New Orpheum Theatre (1930) at Cremorne by G.N.Kenworthy.

The weakness that the British showed when challenged by Japanese expansionism in the Pacific during World War II and America’s role in avoiding defeat led to a reconsideration of Australia’s defense relationship with London and a gradual weakening of ties with the home country. After the war, a mass immigration program from Britain and Europe changed the cultural face of Australia. By 1958, Sydney’s population had doubled, from one million in 1926 to two million.

The period since World War II has been one of increasing international influence in Australian architecture, with a shift away from Britain and a much greater awareness of European, Japanese, and American influences. Sydney, situated in the southwest Pacific, was well situated to take advantage of these shifts. Its hedonism and lack of well- considered theory resulted in a superficial borrowing of ideas rather than a deeply considered and well-assimilated style. In the 1950s, a split occurred between the supporters of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Romantic organic interpretation, led by what became known afterward as the “Sydney school,” a misnomer insofar as it referred to Oak Park, Chicago, not Sydney. Arrayed against the neo-Wrightian camp were the proponents of the European modern cause, with Gropius, Breuer, and Le Corbusier as its exemplars. As a division, it hid a deeper split between those supporting an Australian national identity and those wanting Sydney architecture to be more international. The arrival in 1948 on the Sydney scene of the Viennese-born and Harvard-trained Harry Seidler (1923–) would serve to heighten this division later. The neo-Wrightians in the opposing camp were represented by Peter Muller (Audette House, Castlecrag, 1953; Whale Beach house, 1954, for his family; and the ambitious “Kumale” residence at Palm Beach, 1956), Neville Gruzman (Goodman House, 1956, and Holland House, 1962, both at Middle Cove), and Bruce Rickard’s “Mirrabooka” at Castle Hill (1964). All testify to the extent of Wright’s influence at the time.

Seidler’s first work was the Rose Seidler House (1950) at Killara, built for his mother. He had designed this house in New York for another client and later relocated it to Killara. Its uncompromising modern character, flat roof, and open planning, as well as its New England modern, Breuer-inspired detailing and contrast of smooth industrial steel windows against rough mass sandstone walls, shocked Sydney residents and provoked wide debate.

Australian architecture since 1945 has largely been about two architects: Harry Seidler (1923–) and Glenn Murcutt (1936–). Both are Sydney architects, and both are committed to modern architectural principles, yet they manage to exemplify the two quite different, if not opposed, architectural currents: a place-based modernism versus a modernist internationalism.

Seidler’s career spans 50 years and includes a large number of high-quality houses. In the 1960s, he designed the 183-meter-high Australia Square Tower (1967) with Nervi as his structural consultant and the 65-story MLC Centre (1978). In the 1980s, Seidler became increasingly engaged in office tower projects, resulting in a geometrically disciplined series in Melbourne and Perth as well as Sydney’s Grovernor Place (1988) and a radical departure from his customary freestanding approach, the Capita Centre (1990), which, like the Ford Foundation Headquarters (1968) in New York, was based around a garden atrium. In 1956, Sydney held an international architectural competition for the design of a performing arts center—a long-needed addition to its musical and theater cultural infrastructure. Jørn Utzon, a Dane, won the competition in a field of 230 submissions for a remarkable design that he set about developing from Hellebaek. After three years of intense investigation by his structural consultant, Ove Arup and Partners, for the dramatic shell roofs, Utzon proposed a spherical geometry to suit prefabrication of the elements. In 1966, Utzon withdrew from the project and was replaced by a Sydney consortium led by Peter Hall that completed the project for its opening in October 1973.

Utzon employed Australian assistants; of these, Richard Le Plastrier (1939–) has been the most faithful follower in terms of an anonymous landscape-based, organic domestic idiom. The principal legacy of Utzon was the contribution of his Opera House to the city itself and recognition that as a sculpture it completed and gave the city a climax that oriented it toward the harbor. Utzon’s personal influence, which was small, survives through a few of his young Australian assistants, including Richard Le Plastrier. The Sydney Opera House remains unchallenged as Australia’s greatest work of architecture and as an international synonym for the city.

Glenn Murcutt’s career began with the Marie Short farmhouse (1975) near Kempsey, and although much of his work has been done in Sydney, his best houses are reserved for its fringes or beyond. This has given him an undeserved reputation as a rural designer. In Sydney, his Carpenter house, Point Piper (1982); Stuart Littlemore house, Woollahra (1986); Tom Magney house, Paddington (1990); and Ken Done House, Mosman (1991) testify to his ability to deal with tight city sites and to inject a degree of lyricism and environmental common sense into the urban context.

Compared to Seidler, who ignored local factors in his identification with an international modern tradition inspired by Gropius, Breuer, and Le Corbusier, Murcutt’s veranda-inspired spaces and celebration of vernacular verities, such as corrugated iron, glass louvres, and standard ridge ventilators, together with his poetic response to landscape, were widely perceived as distinctively Australian.

Besides giving an enormous stimulus to the Homebush Bay site west of the central business district, the 2000 Olympic Games boosted architectural activity in terms of hotels, rail, airport, and road transport. Barcelona was adopted as a model in terms of the way in which the Olympics could be used to upgrade the city by investing more than $300 million in new pedestrian squares, a Barcelona-derived rail/bus interchange at Central Station (1999), and the Cook and Phillip Park swimming complex (1999), with a 240-meter-long square on its top creating a major new urban plaza and meeting place south of St. Mary’s Cathedral. Sculpture walks, new smart lighting, granite paving, and widened footpaths improved the city for pedestrians. Opposed to this is the crass addition of three luxury apartment blocks at Circular Quay East (1999) that obstruct the view of the Opera House and disconnect it from the city.

The 110,000-seat Stadium Australia (1998) is typical of the new Olympic venues: it impresses more by its size, engineering, and straightforward planning than by any imaginative qualities. Only the main Olympic Park railway station (1998) by Hassel Pty Ltd and the Archery 2000 building (1999) by Stutchbury and Pape rise much above the mundane.

Clearly, Sydney is struggling to deal with its size and its uncontrolled expansion to the west and north. The investment in facilities at its center is matched by the poor air quality, road congestion, and underfunding of public transport at its fringes.

PHILIP DREW

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

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Utzon’s resistance to scholarly research and documentation and his reticence to cooperate with critical assessment have created severe problems for the serious historian, with the unfortunate consequence that there is a proliferation of errors resulting from an overreliance on secondary source material. There has been far more publication and interpretation than research into establishing reliable facts. The Fromonot account, for instance, is largely a compilation of material copied from Zodiac numbers 5, 10, and 14, with additions. Because these issues are rare, their republication in this way is undoubtedly useful. Utzon scholarship remains at an early stage. 

The Arup Journal 8, no. 3 (October 1973) (special issue on the Sydney Opera House)

Baume, Michael, The Sydney Opera House Affair, Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1967

Drew, Philip, Sydney Opera House: Jørn Utzon, London: Phaidon Press, 1995

Drew, Philip, The Masterpiece: Jørn Utzon, a Secret Life, South Yarra, Victoria: Hardie Grant Books, 1999

Duek-Cohen, Elias, Utzon and the Sydney Opera House: Statement in the Public Interest,Sydney: Morgan, 1967

Fromonot, Françoise, Jørn Utzon et l’Opéra de Sydney, Paris: Gallimard, 1998; as Jørn Utzon: The Sydney Opera House, Corte Madera, California: Gingko, and Milan: Electa, 1998

Messent, David, Opera House Act One, Balgowlah, New South Wales, Australia: David Messent Photography, 1997

Nobis, Philip, “Utzon’s Interiors for the Sydney Opera House: The Design Development of the Major and Minor Hall, 1958–1966,” B.Arch. thesis, University of Technology, Sydney, 1994

“The Sydney Opera House,” Zodiac 14 (1965)

Sydney Opera House in Its Harbour Setting: Nomination of Sydney Opera House in Its Harbour Setting for Inscription on the World Heritage List, Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1996

Yeomans, John, The Other Taj Mahal, Harlow: Longmans, 1968