What makes a building great? Australia's leading architects meet for symposium in Sydney

On Friday, the most illustrious talk fest ever featuring only Australian architects will take place in Sydney with hopes the Architecture Symposium’s outcome will be “that we can all see ourselves for what we are worth”.

“And”, adds architect and co-curator of the Architecture Symposium, Angelo Candalepas, “that it strengthens our resolve to do better work.”

It does seem paradoxical that with Australian architectural endeavours currently registering with such impressive force in so many international forums and award programs — and with a legacy of greats that commences with the convict architect of early Sydney Francis Greenaway — having 21 homegrown practitioners as the headliner acts can be an historic first.

“What usually happens at a national conference like this”, Mr Candalepas explained, “is that Australian architects are invited as a support to the internationals who come. So in that sense, it is a great rarity to see a group like this together.”

Mr Candalepas, author of the 2018 Sulman medal-winning Punchbowl Mosque,  and co-curator Wendy Lewin, who sometimes co-designs with her husband, Australia’s only Pritzker Prize winner Glenn Murcutt, have invited a fascinating cast of powerful and original practitioners.

Before an audience of peers at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, their mission is broadly to discourse on the theme of “What makes a building truly great?”

The speakers include Peter Stutchbury, William Smart, Rachel Neeson, Professor Alec Tzannes, Richard Francis Jones, Virginia Kerridge, Neil Durbach, and interstaters John Wardle, Thomas Bailey, Stuart Vokes and others.

While the collective comes trailing scores of state and national awards “and gold medals and professorships”, Mr Candalepas said he could have added 20 or 30 others “because in a country of 25 million we have 50 brilliant firms of architects and we should be promoting this to ourselves”.

As one of the opening events of the 12^th annual Sydney Architecture Festival (September 28-October 1), and convened by the Architecture Media group who promote numerous idea-sharing events across the calendar, on this occasion an international speaker has been allowed to share the stage.

New York-based architecture critic and one-time Pritzker Prize jurist Karen Stein will be involved in the closing session.

In a month when the Sydney Opera House is marking its 45^th anniversary, and in a year that Canberra’s Parliament House turns 30, and when major projects are still being handed out to overseas firms (supported by local studios), Mr Candalepas doesn’t quibble about the value that international practitioners can add to the built Australian landscape.

“It’s not a bad thing to have overseas people come here and do their best work”, he said. “But we [Australians] need to be vigilant about our competitive edge. Great international architects can always be a benefit but it should not be at the expense of us.”

The question of who does the better work Down Under is, he admits, ultimately up to history to assess.

“But I always say we do better with architecture that is peculiar to this country’s climate and landscape and to the way we see the world. We always have a kind of frontier thinking in our minds,” he said.

“We have novel and esoteric and interesting people here and there is a real need for us not to allow people to forget just how much talent is here.

“What we’re trying to do [with the Symposium] is to highlight first that there are Australian architects of great merit working here.”