Architecture of Australia

Iconic Australian designs include the UNESCO listed Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building, Brisbane City Hall and the 11 remnant penal colony sites selected for World Heritage protection in 2010.

While these attempts were largely unsuccessful due in part to cultural cringe, distinctively Australian styles of architecture had already evolved organically.

With the Australian gold rushes of the mid-19th-century major buildings, largely in Melbourne and Sydney and to a lesser extent in regional capitals such as Ballarat and Bendigo were built in the style of Victorian architecture.

[citation needed] From about 1850 to 1893 Italianate architecture was also popular as it allowed greater displays of prosperity through rich and ornate decorate features such as cast iron lace work and slate roofs.

Castlecrag was planned by the Griffins and also features a number of houses designed in the organic Modernist style they developed after the Prairie School architecture that marked his earlier career in the United States.

[2] As pastoralists took up land and built solid, single story dwellings the addition of verandahs proved popular as they provided shade and looked attractive.

Green bans helped to protect historic 18th-century buildings in The Rocks from being demolished to make way for office towers, and prevented the Royal Botanic Gardens from being turned into a carpark for the Sydney Opera House.

In Melbourne a battle was fought to preserve historic Carlton, Victoria from slum reclamation for public housing, while gentrification played a big part in the suburb's salvation.

Many of the destruction occurred after the International Modernism style arrived in Australia, making Australians particularly conscious about Victorian architecture they felt was "dated".

Buildings were often heavily influenced by the origins of their patrons, hence while the British would like to be reminded of their Gothic churches and Tudoresque cottages of a perfect England, the Dutch, German, Polish, Greek, Italian and other nationalities would also attempt to recreate the architecture of their homelands.

A 19th-century engraving of an indigenous Australian encampment, representing the Indigenous mode of life in the cooler parts of Australia before the arrival of Europeans
Australian cities suffered from lax or nonexistent heritage preservation and protection , resulting in widespread loss of prominent early architectural styles–for example, Melbourne's Queen Anne style APA Building , built in 1889, was one of the world's tallest buildings in the 1890s but was demolished in the contemporary-conscious early 1980s. [ 3 ]
Internationally, the Sydney Opera House is the most recognised symbol of Sydney
Fraction of over 15 year olds with a qualification in architecture or building by Statistical Local Area as of the 2011 Australian Census
Sydney Harbour Bridge