Tuesday, 16 June 2026
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

I welcome you this evening, as is my tradition, in the language of the Gadigal, the Traditional Owners of the lands where we gather tonight.

One of the first European buildings erected in Australia was a prefabricated canvas house^[1] brought ashore shortly after the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove,^[2] or Warrane as it was called by the local people. Little more than a glorified tent, it was the official residence and office of the First Governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Phillip. Its location, as well as the Colony that would form around it, was not the intended destination when Phillip set sail from Portsmouth, England, on the 13th of May 1787.

The change to Sydney Cove from Botany Bay was driven by the necessity for fresh water and safe harbour for the 732 convicts and almost equal number of military personnel, sailors, and a few accompanying family members.

Phillip soon recognised the need, in his words, for a boundary “to circumscribe the Situation of our new Settlement”, and 4 months later proclaimed the County of Cumberland, with limits defined by the mountains to the west, the Hawkesbury to the north, and Botany Bay to the South… that today continues to define, in broad terms, the area of Greater Sydney.^[3]

Nearly two and half centuries later, that isolated and near-starving penal colony has transformed into a global city regularly ranking in AT Kearney’s ‘global elite’ list.^[4] That is a remarkable accolade, given that in every respect Sydney was, from the start, an accidental city, the product of a “laissez-faire individualism [that] frustrated effective control of 19th century urban growth”^[5] and resulted in “a series of spontaneous, organic and largely uncoordinated developments.”^[6]

Hence, by 1917, Legislative Councillor, J D Fitzgerald could lament:

[Sydney is] a city without a plan, save whatever planning was due to the errant goat. Wherever this animal made a track through the bush, there are the streets of today.^[7]

That laissez-faire individualism has arguably been a feature of the city’s development ever since – right through to the larger scale high rise developments that dominated our skyline in the 1970’s and 80’s, much of which had little architectural merit and even less aestheticism. It was likewise with the suburban sprawl that became Greater Sydney’s answer to our growing population.

That leads me to ask: where are we today? And what is the future for our city and our urban areas when we hear daily of a housing crisis, not on the horizon but in our midst?

As to today: due in part at least to poor planning and some lack of futureproofing, there are two levers in operation: insufficient housing and infrastructure and cost, with house prices having risen 57% in the 10 years to 2025.^[8]

As to the future: Sydney’s population is projected to increase by nearly 25% over the next 20 years from 5.3 to 6.5 million^[9]. 15% of us are already aged 65 and over;^[10] and the number aged over 85 is set to double in the next 10-20 years.^[11] By contrast, there is only a 19% projected increase in the workforce.^[12]

How and where will this span of people live, work, study, and play? What is, or should be, the interplay between place and community? – questions which call for both immediate and longer-term solutions. 

The Ancient Greek town planner Hippodamus contended, according to Aristotle, that the ideal size of a city – in Greek, the polis – was one where every citizen could recognise the face of every other.^[13] For him, that encompassed some 10,000 citizens, which in ancient Greece meant 10,000 free males… but it does give that sense that sociability and connection is the essence of the polis or city or place.

In their 2023 Utzon lecture, Mun Summ Wong and Richard Hassell of WOHA Architects in Singapore emphasised just this point.^[14] They spoke of the importance of Systems Thinking in design. Drawing on Jeremy Lent’s The Web of Meaning, their approach is based on the idea that “meaning is generated through the connections we make, the way we productively work together, and […] by asking ‘are we being good ancestors to our descendants?’”^[15] stressing the importance of ‘long-termism’ to counter the ‘short-termism’ that too-often plagues the economics of city planning.

WOHA’s Skyville at Dawson project in Singapore, built to house 960 families, became their prototype for this approach to the built environment. Its essential focus was on the ‘community’ of residents the project would house. The building comprised 47 floors, in 4 stacks comprising 11 levels, with breezeways or Sky Parks on every 11th level creating a village effect within the sections of the building which they described as “a kind of club sandwich or layer cake.”^[16]

The result?... increased sociability, greater physical mobility, especially for the older inhabitants, and due to the breezeways, reduced energy consumption by about 5%.^[17]

Were there challenges? – they had 7 different ministries with which to deal, in respect of which they also drew attention to the effects of ‘silo thinking’, which, as we know, can both define and restrict institutional decision making, with the risk that today’s solution is tomorrow’s problem.^[18] Hence their entreaty that we be good ancestors.

The challenges of urban development today are, of course, much different from those which confronted the Ancient Greeks, or Captain Phillip for that matter. And today’s challenges vary in different locations and for different demographics.

But regardless of the differences and the challenges, our cities demand, and certainly deserve, planning and design that enhances the community it serves. What is not needed are solutions just for today or solutions without a soul but, rather, as Hippodamus recognised, the requirement is to create a polis for the people – that being “the ultimate task of the ‘planner as master artist’.”^[19]

Which provides the perfect point at which to introduce tonight’s speaker.

Leone Lorrimer is a distinguished Australian architect with a four‑decade career shaping major design practices and city‑scale projects across Australia, the UK, and the Middle East.

She has been recognised as a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, an Indesign Luminary, winner of the NAWIC Businesswoman Award, listed in 100 Women of Influence, and is an invited member of Chief Executive Women.

She is also a keen sailor and Board Member of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club.

Leone Lorrimer…