Architecture

The Library has a diverse architecture collection, spanning from the early 19th century until today, documenting the built environment and heritage of New South Wales. The collection covers a range of formats including architectural and technical drawings, sketches and sketchbooks, presentation drawings, specifications and other manuscript material, and photographs, and includes material representing significant New South Wales architects, architectural firms, buildings, and building styles.

The collection includes the drawings of several significant 19th century New South Wales architects, including Francis Greenway, John Verge, Edmund Blacket, Thomas Rowe, James Barnet (NSW Government Architect) and John Horbury Hunt, and twentieth century practitioners Walter Burley Griffin, Arthur Baldwinson, Hugh Buhrich, Jorn Utzon, Ken Woolley, Peter Muller, Richard Leplastrier, and Glenn Murcutt.

The collection also encompasses the archives of several significant New South Wales architectural firms, including Harry Seidler and Associates, John Andrews International, Merewether and Bagot and Clive Lucas, Stapleton & Partners.

The architecture collections can be viewed onsite in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Some material is digitised and can be viewed online.

• How to order copies
• How to have images digitised

• Digital collections search
• Catalogue searching – search for an architect or building and then use 'Format' filter: choose Pictures, then choose Architectural & Technical Drawings 

• Architecture: arrival of modernism
• Architecture: nineteenth-century Sydney
• Francis Greenway: convict architect
• Harry Seidler collection
• The flat roofs of Sydney
• Upper North Shore architects