Historic Houses Trust’s Sydney Open 2010

Billed by its promoters, the Historic Houses Trust, as an “Architectural Adventure”, Sydney Open has at its heart a passion, which makes it such a compelling event: the passion it takes to produce great architecture, the passion of clients to challenge architects to produce their finest works, the passion for the responsibilities of custodianship, the passion for living heritage and its extension into new histories, as well as the passion of the army of volunteers giving their time for the success of the event. The eighth edition of Sydney Open expanded for the first time from a one-day to two-day event in 2010. This neatly delineates the twin offerings – the singular focus tours, and the city pass which provides access to over fifty celebrated structures.

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Harry Seidler’s 1967 Killara House was open for guided tours hosted by Penny Seidler.

Image: Max Dupain

The focus tours allow access to sensitive sites for limited audiences. The passion was certainly in evidence on a damp autumn morning at the 1967 Wilkinson Award-winning house that Harry Seidler built for himself and his family in Killara. The house is anchored firmly to the edge of an intricate ravine, whose swollen cascades and vibrant birdsong provided a suitably stunning background to the cantilevered concrete gesamtkunstwerk. It was a great privilege to have as our guide Penny Seidler, who noted nothing had been changed in forty years, as they had “got it right the first time.” The qualities that garnered admiration more than four decades ago are not diminished by the passage of time.

A contrast in every respect to the Killara house, Kirkbride was designed in the 1880s as a state-of-the-art psychiatric institution set in Callan Park on the shores of Iron Cove. Kirkbride was reborn in 1996 as the Sydney College of the Arts, an academic college of the University of Sydney. The evident energy of the students’ work and career beginnings offers hope to a place whose site-quarried stone walls contain long memories of the former tenants’ sufferings.

The city pass is the equivalent of architectural speed-dating and, at first glance, the difficulty comes in editing the map into a coherent or specific itinerary. From the stately elegance of the sandstone colleges of Australia’s first university to the vertiginous glass lifts of Norman Foster’s 2005 Deutsche Bank Place, those willing to open their doors to a curious public run the gamut of building owners.

With such a smorgasbord of options, there will naturally be some that are unable to fulfil every urban fantasy or curiosity. Sometimes value lies in the unfamiliarity of imagined spaces behind familiar facades. Some venues overpromise, some over deliver, but the cumulative effect of visiting them all in such a compressed format is a sense of privilege – privilege to step beyond the braided rope, privilege to peek behind the hidden doors.

The passion and insight of the guides – whether they are the commissioning owners, the original or subsequent architects, enthusiastic volunteers or the current custodians – is the key offering and one that should never be taken for granted. Which is why, with gratitude and curiosity, I will await the next instalment of this biennial event.