KILLING SYDNEY Picador Pan Macmillan (Sydney) 2020
This book, part love-song, part-jeremiad, is both a Sydney monograph and a book about all cities caught up in increasing inequality, deregulation, environmental wantonness and the irresistible power of corporate money. Sydney is both infuriatingly crass and blindingly seductive. Determined to self-sabotage, it nevertheless has moments of extraordinary sweetness. This book is an attempt to understand, record and protect Sydney’s sweet side.
Published by Picador for Pan Macmillan, it WAS due to be launched at the Sydney Writer’s Festival 2020 and now….January 26th 2021. Invasion Day.
CARO WAS HERE (Walker) Sydney 2014
CARO WAS HERE is a crime novel for children (9-11 years). Caro is impatient and bored. Term is all but finished and there’s nothing doing at school. Having persuaded a group of friends to leave school with her, escape to an island and miss the last ferry home, she finds herself with rather more adventure than she expected and must use everything at her disposal to stop an adventure becoming a disaster.
Potential Difference; assays and sorties (Blurb) 2011
Blubberland; the dangers of happiness (Australia / NZ edition) New South (Sydney) 2007
Blubberland; the dangers of happiness (US / UK edition 2007)
Blubberland; the dangers of happiness (Turkish edition) Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Istanbul 2008
“Elizabeth Farrelly is a whole lot of fun, especially for an architecture critic.”
– The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 15 2008
Figure 1: Glenn Murcutt, Elizabeth Farrelly and Prime Minister Paul Keating at the launch of ‘Three Houses’ in Sydney 1993
THREE HOUSES: GLENN MURCUTT (Phaidon, Architecture in Detail Series 1993)
Murcutt’s houses combine the minimalist Miesian pavilion with the primitive hut to produce a new, striking and peculiarly Australian synthesis. The three houses covered in this volume chart the development of his unique style. The Marie Short House, with its shed-like appearance, inaugurated the architect’s primitive treatment of form. Despite its tough exterior, the timber-lined interior of the building is a masterpiece of delicacy and warmth. The Ball-Eastaway House, designed as a dual gallery and dwelling-place for two artists, takes the primitive aesthetic further and is constructed entirely from corrugated iron. Magney House with its expressive wave-shaped metal roof marks a new level of confidence and maturity. All three houses demonstrate an alliance between refinement and primitiveness that is characteristic of Glen Murcutt’s work.
“This book is full of amazing and inspiring photography that is only surpassed by the author’s exquisitely written essays. I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in our built environment. Murcutt’s ability to synthesize modern architecture with regional and environmental concerns is truly remarkable. His buildings contrast with nature in that the natural environment’s raw and delicate attributes are enhanced through the comparison with the finished industrial character of his buldings. Murcutt, however, does not subvert nature to man because his buildings, with their reflective quality, depend upon the environment for their identity with facades that change with the time of day and the colors of the foliage. His buildings sit very lightly on their harsh yet delicate sites describing Murcutt’s early concern for environmental preservation.”