Brutalism in Australia

Brutalism arrived in Australia in the 1960s through architects trained abroad and through the state public works offices that built the country's expanding universities, courts and public housing. Harry Seidler, who had studied with Gropius and Breuer, brought a rigorous modernist line to Sydney and pushed it toward sculptural concrete in works like the Seidler House (1967). The New South Wales Government Architect's office fostered a distinctive local school, and Ken Woolley and the practice Ancher Mortlock Murray & Woolley shaped its refined, textured concrete manner.

Sydney holds the movement's most debated landmark, the stepped Sirius (1980) apartment block by Tao Gofers at The Rocks, saved from demolition after a long campaign. In Queensland, Robin Gibson planned the Queensland Performing Arts Complex (QPAC) (1985) and its cultural precinct, while Melbourne developed its own tougher strain around Graeme Gunn. University campuses remain the richest hunting ground for Australian brutalism.