ABSTRACT
Designed in 1975 and completed in 1980, the Sirius Apartments (see Fig 1), located in Sydney’s historic Rocks precinct, has, since its opening, attracted significant public criticism, including that of the National Trust of Australia, who bluntly described it as the “lump in the Rocks”.2 Perennially nominated as one of Sydney’s great architectural eyesores,3 the Sirius Apartments were conceived towards the end of a period when the Brutalist idiom dominated architectural thinking and practice internationally. Fabrications, 2015 Vol. 25, No. 2, 234-261, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2015.1032481 2015 The Journal of the Society of Architectural Australia and New Zealand
This article contextualises and presents a reassessment of the Sirius Apartments. It does this by considering the sociopolitical image of British New Brutalism and its development internationally. It is informed by personal communication with the building’s architect, Tao Gofers, as well as analysis of the building’s design and changing attitudes towards it. The article demonstrates that Brutalist language had been absorbed into mainstream architectural practice in Sydney by the mid-1970s; in its parts, its structure and its materials, the Sirius Apartments can be interpreted as a practical ethic.
