This September, the Sydney Architecture Festival returns to the heart of the city for its 12^th annual event. For four days, a program of talks, tours and exhibits will explore what makes a building truly great, including a special focus on the beauty and history of the Sydney Opera House.

Included in the annual event will be The Architecture Symposium, presented for the first time in Sydney on Friday 28 September, and the annual World Architecture Day Oration on Monday 1 October – presented by acclaimed New York architectural critic and writer Karen Stein.

“The 12th annual Sydney Architecture Festival invites Sydneysiders to get behind some of our most iconic buildings and ask: what makes a building truly great?” says Tim Horton, NSW Architects Registrar and Director of the Sydney Architecture Festival. “2018 is a supernova for milestones in Australian architecture. With major anniversaries for the Sydney Opera House and Australia’s Parliament House coinciding with plans for their future, this year’s Festival looks at our opportunity to preserve, protect and renew the enduring legacy of these modern monuments for future generations.”

Notably, 2018 marks the centenary of Jørn Utzon’s birth, and 45 years since the opening of Sydney Opera House. With this in mind, a real highlight of the program is the Poisoned Chalice to Social Icon: An Accelerated History of the Sydney Opera House speech. Architectural historian Dr. Anne Watson will explore the intriguing and untold history of an icon of the Sydney built environment – suitably held, like all talks of the program, in the Utzon Room of the Opera House itself.

The full program can be seen here, but another highlight is the presence of Karen Stein, out from New York to delivers this year’s World Architecture Day Oration on Monday 1 October. Drawing on nearly 10 years of her experience as a member of the judging panel of The Pritkzer Architecture Prize and editor/critic to some of the world’s premier architecture publications, Stein will be exploring the fundamentals of architecture as a public act. She will ask what is architecture? Who makes architecture? And why is it meaningful?

The Sydney Architecture Festival is an annual highlight on the design calendar, and the 12^th iteration of the festival looks to bring the good once again. For full details of the Sept 28 – Oct 1 program, visit their website.