Imagine A City, a new exhibition from the State Library of NSW challenges visitors to picture cities, suburbs or towns without public buildings

The exhibition hopes to shine a light on public architecture across the state, showing buildings afresh for architecture nerds and casual fans alike.

Curated by author Charles Pickett the Imagine A City exhibition will take a look at the role public buildings play in our lives through a combination of legacy and simple architectural wonder.

Throughout its over 200-year history, the state government Architect’s Office has played a key role in the formulation of many of the sate’s most celebrated and iconic buildings, along with some of its most controversial.

Featuring a rich and seldom seen collection of original drawings, early photographs, architectural plans and models from both iconic buildings old and new alike, Imagine A City will feature work by iconic artists and photographers such as Max Dupain, Lloyd Rees and Harold Cazneaux.

The story of the New South Wales Government Architect’s Office began 200 years ago with Francis Greenway, the first government architect appointed in 1816 ands since then 23 different government architects and hundreds of staff have designed many thousands of buildings – courthouses, post offices, schools, police stations, goals, libraries, galleries and parks, which means that an exhibition showing these off will have a great wealth of resources to show off.

The exhibition will run from 20 February to 8 May 2016.

State Library of New South Wales
sl.nsw.gov.au