Sydney Architecture: The Making of a Global City [Hardcover]

Paul McGillick (Author), Patrick Bingham-Hall (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2005

Sydney Architecture documents the rich architectural tradition of Australia's oldest and largest city. Sydney's best architecture has responded to the stunning landscape of Sydney's renowned harbor and surrounding bushland: from elegant Georgian and Regency houses to opulent mansions, ornate sandstone-carved buildings to sleek white houses contrasting vividly with the unruly bushcape of suburban Sydney and culminating in the magnificent Opera House-the inspiration for subsequent Sydney architecture. This book features over 100 of Sydney's best buildings with stunning color photographs by Patrick Bingham-Hall.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul McGillick is an architectural writer and journalist, and is currently the editor of Indesign Magazine.

Patrick Bingham-Hall was the photographer for Singapore Architecture, Architecture Bali and Houses for the 21st Century, all published by Periplus.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 191 pages
• Publisher: Periplus Editions (June 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0794603343
• ISBN-13: 978-0794603342
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,674,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Sydney Architecture, September 6, 2011

By 

Katrina - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sydney Architecture: The Making of a Global City (Hardcover)

It's mid-afternoon at the house of highprofile architectural photographer Patrick Bingham-Hall. There are five kids rabblerousing on a leaf-strewn veranda cattered
with Textas and drawing paper and toys with wheels. There are babies in the pantry and jam on the underside of the beautiful books produced by Bingham-Hall and his lawyer publisher wife, Katrina. Work goes on in the offices at the front of the house and the darkroom below. Bingham-Hall used to rent space elsewhere, "but it just got pointless", he says. "When you've got young, beautiful children you don't want to be away from them ..."
It is a little difficult to believe that, among this mayhem, the couple has published, under the tag Pesaro, so many books, largely featuring Bingham-Hall's photographs. In Australia and increasingly in Asia and Europe, Bingham-Hall is linked to architecture in the way that Richard Avedon is linked to fashion or Annie Leibovitz to celebrity portraiture. Architect Neil Durbach of Durbach Block, a firm that is the subject of a Pesaro monograph, describes Bingham-Hall as the supreme
"blink" photographer: "A perfect instinct for the perfect moment as a result of an extraordinary, broad knowledge and love for the medium."
Like Avedon and Leibovitz, Bingham-Hall is much more than a gun-for-hire lens-man. He has been a part of the architectural scene: a participant, a contributor and in some senses a collaborator and an advocate of architecture - "one of the very, very few that we have in Australia today", Durbach says.
It's no wonder, then, that he wrestled with what seemed to be the complacency of the local publishers with whom he often worked, then set up his own publishing company back in 1999. "I figured I could do it better," he says, with a good-natured shrug. "I've always had much more of an interest in architecture than in
photographing and it was like, `Well, I can really indulge myself now. I'll do it properly. I'll do books that matter.'"
Pesaro has knocked out 19 publications, some in two or more editions, with another eight due out this year. The first release was a tribute to Darwin firm Troppo Architects. There followed volumes on the likes of Peter Stutchbury, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, Durbach Block and a range of titles such as New Directions in Australian Architecture and Houses for the 21st Century.
"I had to like the architecture. I had to respect the architect," says Bingham-Hall, defining his selection criteria. His latest book is Sydney Architecture, a collection of about 100 building profiles compiled by writer Paul McGillick and Bingham-Hall. And what does he include in this survey? Not, as he puts it, "all the houses
with beautiful pools around the harbour, blah blah blah", but a spread of work including colonial treasures such as The Mint in Macquarie Street; rarely mentioned late-19thcentury gems such as the handsome, riverside Thomas Walker Convalescent Hospital (now known as Rivendell) in Concord; mid-century standouts such as Audette House in Castlecrag and Gruzman House in Darling Point; and recent work by practitioners such as Engelen Moore, Stanisic Associates, Alex Popov and
Durbach Block.
"It's a catholic spread," he says. "One interesting thing about Sydney [is] there's always been, every decade, a few good buildings. It's not like it's been a hit-and-miss city. There's this sort of constant production and quality to the architecture." Bingham-Hall is qualified to cull those numbers of fine buildings to a shortlist of a hundred or so; he's been inside, outside, under and atop just about every significant Sydney building, new or old, in the past couple of decades. He believes you have to know architecture and understand the best aspects of a structure to take a good photograph of a building. Yet, as much as he's absorbed and loves
the architects' work, he'd never consider swapping roles. "I reckon I've got the best of both worlds," he says. "With photography, it's constant highs. And with publishing. Every hour you've done another something great. It must get awfully boring in architecture, continually going around and around and around the trees on the same bloody project."
Bingham-Hall's passion for the city's colonial character gave the book its historical sweep. "I love the scruffy areas like Millers Point and The Rocks, if you can ever get there without seeing all the crap. That part of Sydney: the Georgian architecture and the robust, classical, early colonial architecture. You walk around those streets near the Palisade Hotel and it's absolutely bloody magic," he says. "I'd like to say it's Dickensian and I suppose it is in a way. There is something really rough and earthy and gritty about the joint."
Increasingly, Bingham-Hall is based in Asia (accompanied last year by Katrina and the children: Salty, Pepe, Rosie, Tommy and William), doing better and better deals for Pesaro Publishing with international distributors and continuing the front-line work he loves so much. "I remember thinking to myself quite clearly," he says, "when I was in Shenzhen photographing a building on a freezing cold day: `This is great. I've got no other cares in the world. I can't even remember anything
about my life except standing here photographing this building.' I felt really good. I remember thinking how good I felt - still, after all these years." - Guy Allenby SMH