Sydney Architecture Festival

Overview

Following the October long weekend, tolerance for ill-conceived built environments will suffer another crushing blow. Like it or lump it, architecture shapes every space we inhabit. Advocating the dictum ‘good architecture, good life’, the annual Architecture Festival takes place on World Architecture Day, Monday 5 October, in the some say ill-conceived hub of Customs House, Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House.
 
Festival organisers have programmed a stellar line-up of events including talks, walks, a gigantic Lego play station and a narrated harbour cruise to take in the architectural prowess of Sydney’s foreshore. One of the more tempting programs on offer is the Powerhouse Museum self-guided walking tour around Pyrmont and Ultimo. Able festival goers can pick-up a recorded guide by Curator Anni Turnbull and wander the surrounding neighbourhood.
 
The highlight of the festival will be the much anticipated tète-à-tète between Pritzker prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt AO, novelist David Malouf and academic Julianne Schultz. This trio of exceptionally well-informed minds will vouch for the value of good architecture as vital to the betterment of humans the world over, while also dabbling in a smidge of back-catalogue style discussions around their lives and work.
 
Anne Watson will also lead a lecture on the blight of Australia’s architectural history – the replacement of Jorn Utzon by Peter Hall as the completing architect of the Sydney Opera House.

Image: Angelo Candalepas, All Saints Primary School, winner of the Sulman Award this year