Built, Unbuilt and Imagined Sydney

Book excerpt: Built, Unbuilt, and Imagined Sydney presents the expanded field of architecture. It aims to show that the practice of architecture exceeds the work legally defensible under the title of the architect. Besides the design and construction of buildings, the disciplinary field of architecture consists of exhibition and display; discussions and lectures; competitions and visions of new public domains; interactions between art and architecture in the form of installations, performances, and public art; and ideas on new directions for the practice of architecture. The book, therefore, places emphasis on practice as an intellectual activity, in addition to the definition of the term informed by business and legal parameters. It is seen as the meaningful exercise of social, political, and critical knowledge, skills, and mindset in an urban, spatial, and tectonic condition. The practice is also a public act, mediated, legitimated, and made meaningful through its articulation in various institutional, public, and mediatic realms. The book focuses on built and unbuilt works (residential, commercial, interiors, and so on) in Sydney, inclusive of public art, object or furniture design, key invited or public lectures, studios, current projects in making, competitions, collaborations, exhibitions, installations, and outreach work. The focus is on the innovative and the original¾not the ordinary or the purely commercial.