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Like many architects, Susan and Garry Rothwell found love in the Brutalist grey concrete of the Wilkinson building at the University of Sydney, with vivid memories of being immersed in ideas and talking late into the night.
Sixty years after meeting as students, including 57 years of marriage, Susan, a practising architect, said she was happy to say they still shared a passion for how architecture can shape lives, how cities works and what good design meant.
This passion has prompted the Rothwell Family Foundation to give the university $40 million to support a new $74 million building to provide the same opportunities for future students.
Garry said that when he walked through the campus he remembered where “they’d studied, debated, put on architecture reviews and imagined what sort of architects – and people – we might become”.
It felt “like a full circle moment” to think they were creating a new building for the next generation of architecture, design and planning students.
A former practising architect, and founder of the family’s property development company, the Winten Property Group, Garry said the new 2000-square-metre school aimed to “thoughtfully integrate” with the 67-year-old Wilkinson building.
But the old building is no longer big enough to meet increased demand.
The dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, Professor Donald McNeill, said enrolments across the three disciplines had risen 145 per cent in the past 10 years. The university will fund the balance of the project.
As part of the changes, McNeill said the profile of the Wilkinson building’s gallery space, the much loved Tin Sheds on City Road, would be strengthened.
To create a larger Architecture, Design and Planning precinct, the new building will be constructed on the site of existing greenhouses on Maze Crescent behind the Wilkinson building. The space between the old and new will become a gathering space for students.
McNeill said the new building would be dedicated entirely to teaching and studio spaces, encouraging students to collaborate.
The school’s alumni include many of the country’s most celebrated architects, including Camilla Block, Elizabeth Carpenter, Louise Cox, Philip Cox, Richard Leplastrier, Penelope Seidler, Imants Tillers, Philip Thalis, Peter Tonkin and Hannah Tribe.
Susan said architecture at Sydney had been intellectually demanding, yet deeply human – and the degree had opened their eyes to the world. “It taught us how to observe, how to think visually and spatially, and how to question assumptions.”
That rings true with the cofounder of architecture and design studio Trias, Jennifer McMaster, 2024’s winner of the Australian Institute of Architects’ national emerging architect prize.
A graduate of the University of Sydney, and a practice educator in architecture in the faculty, she said the school had always had an idealistic program that was about leadership and problem-solving.
It brought like-minded people together. It was where she met her husband, Jonathon Donnelly, a director of Trias, and Casey Bryant, its third founder: “We fell in love with architecture there, and this love is the DNA of our practice.”
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Julie Power is a senior reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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