Built, Unbuilt and Imagined Sydney is a humble collection of essays based on built and unbuilt works (residential, commercial, interiors, and so on) of interest in Sydney, inclusive of public art, object or furniture design, key invited or public lectures, studios, current projects in making, competitions, collaborations, exhibitions, installations, and outreach work. The focus is on the innovative and the original not the ordinary and the functional.
The purpose of this is to reveal the expanded field of architecture, and that the practice of architecture exceeds the work legally defensible under the title of the architect. The emphasis is placed on practice as an intellectual activity and on contemporary practice of architecture as the meaningful exercise of social, political, and critical knowledge, skills, and mindset in an urban, spatial, and tectonic condition. The book reveals that all or most architects either adopt as their own or have an interest in an(other) field, such as visual art, urbanism and landscape, virtual reality and three dimensional imaging, installation art and lighting design, and so on. The book aims to reveal therefore the multidisciplinary, urban orientations, and fluid forms of practice.
The essay format as opposed to a monograph or historical survey on a place or period in Australian architecture is deliberate. The aim is to capture not the formal outcome of the architectural practice but to capture the vitality and intensity of architectural thought behind it all. The collection will pick out the creative DNA of the city, as it represents a snapshot of the intensity that marks the critical and creative culture and enterprise informing the architectural scene in Sydney.
Anuradha Chatterjee possesses a Masters in Architectural History and Theory and a PhD in Built Environment, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a Professional Degree in Architecture, 5 year diploma in Architecture from TVB School of Habitat Studies (TVBSHS). She is an Affiliate member of RIBA and registered to practice in India.
She has fourteen years of teaching experience in various countries and universities, where she has taught design, history, theory, and research courses, two years in India (TVB School of Habitat studies and Sushant School of Art and Architecture (SSAA); ten years in Australia, at part time and full time capacities at UNSW, University of South Australia (UNISA), University of Tasmania (UTAS), University of Sydney (USYD); and University of Technology Sydney (UTS); and more recently, one and a half-years full time at Sino-British, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in China (XJTLU).
