Elizabeth Farrelly is one of Sydney’s leading public intellectuals. Currently writer in residence at the University of Sydney’s Henry Halloran Trust, she was for 30 years the Sydney Morning Herald’s weekly principal essayist on urban planning and city-making. Trained in architecture and philosophy, with a PhD in urbanism from the University of Sydney, she is a director of the National Trust NSW, a former City of Sydney councillor and a former associate professor (practice) at UNSW. Author of several published books, she is a Walkley-shortlisted writer, an internationally awarded architecture critic, a former assistant editor of The Architectural Review, London, inaugural chair of The Australian Award for Urban Design, a regular commentator on urban affairs and contributor to Architectural Record NYC. Her most recent book is Killing Sydney: The Fight for a City’s Soul (Picador 2021).
Elizabeth Farrelly's Latest contributions
In praise of the bathtub
The humble bathtub is fast disappearing from our dwellings. Elizabeth Farrelly explores how the ritual of bathing is being erased through design.
The uglifiers: How the decoupling of beauty and goodness has blighted our cities
The lack of aesthetic discussion has impoverished everything, especially architecture, writes Elizabeth Farrelly. We need to understand the dynamic of beauty – and of ugliness.
New frontiers, old behaviours
This year is predicted to be a big year for space exploration. Elizabeth Farrelly considers the architectural proposals for extraterrestrial habitats, questioning whether storming off to new planets a valid response to having wrecked this one?
Sunshine, snowflakes and city-making
This month, Elizabeth Farrelly, ponders the aesthetic of Christmas, its disconnection from meaning and what that says about the environment we make for ourselves.
Lament for lost niches: The architecture of subculture
In this month’s column Elizabeth Farrelly laments the gentrification and homogenization of our cities. A city’s subcultures depend on cracks and crevices – architectural looseness – and without such eccentricities, the city remains dismal and soulless.
Thirty more Surry Hills: The genius of the terrace house
Elizabeth Farrelly explores the reasons why the once reeking slum of inner-Sydney Surry Hills is now seen as a blueprint for the future in tackling the housing crisis.
The roundabout as an instrument of the devil
Far from a symbol of egalitarianism, the roundabout is neoliberalism in action, argues Elizabeth Farrelly. For the old, the weak, the slow and the timid, it’s rampant social Darwinism.
Housing affordability will require a deep cultural shift
Elizabeth Farrelly pitches in on the housing affordability debate, following the recent release of a national housing plan.
In which the middle goes missing
We could easily end sprawl altogether, doubling and quadrupling our density while still creating lively, walkable streets and habitable dwellings. Why do we fail?
Cool grass, hot grass
Elizabeth Farrelly considers an under-acknowledged modernist ally – grass – and how the lazy overuse of synthetic substitutes is leading to overheating, increased toxicity and degradation of the natural and urban environments.
