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The story of the Sydney Opera House – including the events surrounding the departure of Utzon – are well known, but architectural historian and author Dr Anne Watson’s research reveals a deeper story full of intrigue. Combining digital ethnography and data analytics, Dr Cristina Garduño Freeman shares a new way to measure the social value of architectural icons – with implications for World heritage
Three masters of Australian architecture share a lifetime of lessons in the enduring qualities of great design. This panel discussion features Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal winners Richard Leplastrier, Brit Andresen and Peter Stutchbury, whose Invisible House is pictured above
Find out how this wonder of 20th century architecture will meet the demands of the 21st century and beyond. Hear from the four architectural teams involved in the renewal program of the Opera House including Scott Carver, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Grimshaw Architects and Ashton Raggatt McDougall
One of Parliament House’s original architects Ric Thorpe AM shares untold stories from its design and construction with host of ABC TV’s The House, Annabel Crabb
Australian architects are enjoying a bulging order book with many riding the wave of game-changing infrastructure, landmark commercial towers and luxury homes that have-it-all. Yet, this is precisely the time to ask whether architecture still has a social purpose, and a responsibility for public good? This panel discussion is led by executive director of St James Ethics Centre Dr Simon Longstaff AO, Professor Flora Samuel, critic Laura Harding and architect Shaun Carter, whose Spiegel Haus is pictured above
Presented by alumni of MADE by the Opera House (an exchange program offered to Australian and Danish students of architecture, engineering and design), this exhibit shares some of the ingenious methods that made the Opera House an amazing feat of design and engineering that changed the world
In homage to the power of great buildings, Sydney Architecture Festival screens this award-winning art film in collaboration with the Mies Van Der Rohe Foundation and the Catalan Architects in Australia. The documentary explores the enduring mystique of the Barcelona Pavilion, pictured above, a temporary structure that changed the history of architecture
What makes a building truly great? That’s the question driving a four day program of talks, events, tours and exhibits announced for the Sydney Architecture Festival, taking place this year from Friday September 28 until Monday October 1.
This year is a significant one for several of the city, and the country’s, most iconic feats of architectural design. Chief amongst them is the 45th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Opera House, and the centenary of the birth of the Danish architect charged with its indelible design, Jørn Utzon. It’s also the 30th anniversary of Canberra’s Parliament House, a building that broke all the rules at the time of its construction. Both these milestones underpin the program, which per tradition is bookended by the The Architecture Symposium, presented for the first time in Sydney on September 28, and the annual World Architecture Day Oration on October 1.
But it’s not all about those that have come before: the festival promises to look toward both the future of those institutions and forecast the changing nature of the design practice itself. The New York-based critic and almost decade-long juror of the Pritzker Prize, Karen Stein, will deliver the year’s flagship oration in the Opera House’s Utzon Room, where she will take the temperature of architecture globally and reflect on the fundamentals of architecture as a public act, interrogating fundamental questions such as, what is architecture? Who makes architecture? And why is it meaningful?
Highlights from the 12th annual festival can be previewed in the gallery above. The full Sydney Architecture Festival program is available here.
Tile and cover image: Hamilton Lund/Courtesy of the Sydney Architecture Festival
