RAHS Day Lecture – Eight Early Women Architects in Australia

Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 6 August 2025 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000

Cost: Free

Event Description:

This lecture offers short, illustrated summaries of the lives and careers of eight of the most prominent and interesting early women architects to practice in NSW before 1960, as discovered in my PhD research (University of NSW, 2000). Florence Taylor, Marion Mahony Griffin, Ellice Nosworthy, Rosette Edmunds, Heather Sutherland, Winsome Hall Andrew, Eleanor Cullis-Hill and Eva Buhrich. Women architects can disappear from history, but they can also be recovered.

About the speaker:

Dr Bronwyn Hanna is a heritage consultant who trained as an Australian architectural historian in Sydney. She has worked for government, industry and community groups on the history and significance of many heritage places, including the Sydney Opera House and Hyde Park Barracks. She has published two co-authored books about women architects, two long art history reports about heritage places (Hill End and the Dandenong Ranges), and many shorter articles on the built environment. More recently, she undertook 23 oral history interviews with pioneering heritage professionals about their contributions to the Burra Charter for the National Library of Australia.