Standing in a nondescript city laneway, I try to picture how it once looked, how it must have felt, soaking in the bohemian mix of shops back in the 1940s or ’50s. For they used to call this laneway “a touch of Paris”, the jewel of Sydney’s CBD, brimming with cafes, art galleries, dress stores, milliners, bookshops and record stores, housed in grand Edwardian and Victorian buildings. It led to the sandstone-colonnaded Hotel Australia, and to one of the elegant entrances to the original Theatre Royal on Martin Place. From the late 19th century until the mid-1970s, Rowe Street was the beating heart of Sydney’s cosmopolitan life.

Today only a sad sliver of the once exuberant laneway, which originally stretched the full block between Pitt and Castlereagh streets, remains. In 1973, the laneway was severed, and the palatial Hotel Australia and the original Theatre Royal were demolished – despite fierce public opposition at the time – to make way for Harry Seidler’s brutalist MLC Centre tower, now known as 25 Martin Place, which recently underwent a $170 million glow-up of its dated lower levels.

Harry Seidler’s other concrete monoliths in Sydney’s CBD, which include Australia Square and the Grosvenor Place tower, led to the obliteration of dozens of sandstone Edwardian and Victorian buildings. Mercifully, the unforgiving modernist, who was a relentless high-rise lobbyist to councils and government, never succeeded in demolishing the voluptuous grande dame herself – the Romanesque Queen Victoria Building – which he described as an “architectural monstrosity” in an article in the Daily Mirror in 1961. Seidler’s desired replacement? An underground car park and civic square.

Too many of Melbourne’s majestic buildings, constructed from the wealth of the gold rushes and the 1880s land boom, have similarly been lost to the bulldozer: most infamously, the Federal Coffee Palace, built on the corner of Collins and King streets between 1886 and 1888, which The Age described at the time as “one of the largest and most opulent hotels in the world”. Much of Collins Street itself, once hailed as one of the planet’s grandest Victorian shopping strips, was irrevocably scarred, first in the rush to create a modern-looking city for the Royal Tour and the Melbourne Olympics in the 1950s, then in the reconstruction boom of the 1960s and ’70s, despite desperate efforts by the Save Collins Street group to preserve the unique streetscape. By 1975, nearly half of the grand buildings on the eastern end of Collins Street – the so-called “Paris end” – were gone, according to the National Trust. A sign by one of Australia’s oldest demolition companies – “Whelan the Wrecker is Here” – pinned to the facade of an empty building inevitably meant its fate was sealed.

Among other great gems Melbourne lost: the APA Building, a striking 1890 Queen Anne skyscraper topped by spires and gables on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Lane, demolished in 1980 and replaced with a bland five-storey concrete and glass office building; the wildly elaborate Fink’s building with distinctive arched windows on Flinders Street, torn down in 1967; and the Prell’s buildings on Queen Street – a series of three ornate, eight-storey buildings – demolished between 1967 and 1980. A host of historic buildings along St Kilda Road, boasting an array of architectural styles, were also reduced to rubble during this time. Miraculously, many of Melbourne’s trademark laneways survived to become the trendy hubs they are today.

Still, you can’t stop progress and both Sydney and Melbourne boast many sparkling modern buildings. The obvious examples in Sydney are the billowing sails of the Opera House, the recently restored curving façade of the AMP building at Circular Quay (a modern classic built in 1962, now known as 33 Alfred Street), and the new Quay Quarter Tower – said to be the world’s first “upcycled” skyscraper, as it retains 60 per cent of the existing core structure – perched directly behind it. Melbourne’s Manhattan-like skyline, so striking from a distance, is dotted with award-winning residential towers, Eureka Tower and Abode318 among them. But sadly, huge slabs of both cities have been overwhelmed with big glass, steel and concrete boxes that have made whole blocks feel soulless and deathly monotonous at pedestrian level.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, modernist architects declared war on Australia’s classic architecture: the colonial, Georgian, Victorian and art deco buildings that made up our cities. In the process, far too many elegant and refined sandstone and bluestone buildings were razed, replaced with inferior glass and steel boxes that for the most part haven’t dated well. If it weren’t for trade unionist Jack Mundey’s Green Bans in the 1970s, and lobbying by activists such as Juanita Nielsen – who fought developers intent on destroying heritage and pushing working-class tenants out of their premises – Sydney would have lost most of its historic core. The Rocks, Millers Point, Woolloomooloo, Victoria Street and much of Potts Point – all would have succumbed to modern, sterile high-rise.

In Europe over the past decade, a significant backlash against modernism has been propelling a drive to restore classic buildings and streetscapes to their traditional former glory. This is particularly so in cities and towns across Poland, Germany and Britain, which lost so much of their trademark architecture to bombs during World War II, and then to replacement concrete cartons during the post-war decades.

The Architectural Uprising, which started as a Facebook group in Sweden in 2014, became an association two years later and now has chapters across the globe, is a key driver of the new trend. The group bills itself as “a people’s movement against the continued uglification of our cities”. On its Instagram account, it posts dramatic before-and-after shots of ugly-duck buildings and streetscapes across Europe that have been rebuilt or restored to their original striking beauty.

Modernism was driven by an ‘ideological dogma to despise the past’.

In Germany, there’s been the large-scale reconstruction of the historic baroque core of Dresden (known as “Florence on the Elbe” before the 1945 bombing apocalypse wiped out 70 per cent of structures), along with the restoration of Frankfurt’s Old Town and much of historic Potsdam, using historical maps and architectural plans, and traditional building methods. Poland has been particularly vigorous with its meticulous rebuilds in Warsaw’s Old Town and cities including Gdansk, Wroclaw and Elblag.

Earlier this year, The Architectural Uprising announced its inaugural Aesthetic Atrocity Award, given to the ugliest new building in the United States (the dishonour went to Simmons Hall, a residence hall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Joaia Batista, a spokesperson for The Architectural Uprising, believes that modernism was driven by an “ideological dogma to despise the past” and while he acknowledges that some of the rebuilds and restorations have drawn criticism from heritage purists, he insists their sheer beauty far exceeds the drab, boxy buildings of the post-war era, which most people drive past and ignore.

Veteran British architect Robert Adam, a pioneer of contextual architecture – designing buildings that blend in harmoniously within traditional streetscapes – says there has been a groundswell of interest among younger architects in classical designs, in part because this is what communities want. “There have been many research projects and academic papers on what type of architecture ordinary people – not design professionals – prefer, and for decades they come up with the same result: traditional design is preferred by the vast majority,” he tells Good Weekend. “It’s well-established that traditional street patterns – walkable, complex, tightly planned, low-rise and mixed-use – are more successful.”

Batista, who is 25 and based in Portugal, says he is heartened by the revival of interest in classical design, particularly among a young generation of architects, who are recognising that traditional buildings endowed European and British cities with their distinctive character. “Reconstructions are getting labelled less and less as ‘false history’ by newer generations,” he says, “but they still think those works have to have a ‘contemporary stamp’ even if this ruins the whole harmony and look of the building.”

One of Batista’s favourite reconstructions is at 24-26 Hereford Square in London, where a former World War II bomb site at the end of a row of classic, white, stuccoed Victorian terraces had been replaced in 1958 with a bare-bones block of flats built from reinforced concrete and brick cladding. In 2022, the block was demolished and replaced with three white stuccoed townhouses, replicas of the 1846 Italianate originals that stood here for nearly 100 years, restoring the streetscape to its former glory. “There is a huge demand for traditional terrace homes in this area,” says Jeremy Creasor, a residential property broker in London’s Kensington and Chelsea. “It’s very rare for a buyer to ask for a modern house.”

Australia is yet to witness such a vigorous renewal of interest in traditional design, but a small clutch of classical architects is determined to change the conversation towards building homes and public buildings that are both more human and more connected to the environment.

On a grand colonnaded balcony overlooking buzzing Bayswater Road in Sydney’s Potts Point, architect Michael Suttie is pointing to a dreary tower opposite, with its expanse of monotonous brick and aluminium windows. “Modern town planning has been a disaster because it’s been built around the motor car and not people,” says Suttie. “We need to get back to constructing buildings that will last for centuries and not decades.”

‘In the past, if you designed in the classical style you’d risk being ostracised by some architects.’

Architect Robert Mills

Modern architecture, as Suttie sees it, doesn’t pay enough respect to the craftsmanship and building quality of the past, nor the unique character of our city centres and suburban streetscapes. “If you’re going to knock down a heritage building,” he says, “we should be replacing it with a better building. From the point of view of beauty, we’re destroying one of the most extraordinary cities in the world.”

While agreeing with the sentiment, I hasten to point out we’re in the thick of a critical housing shortage, with a dearth of skilled tradespeople and soaring materials costs. Constructing even mediocre houses and public buildings costs serious dollars, so how feasible is it to aim for high quality?

Suttie insists it’s not necessary to spend egregious sums of money erecting homes and public buildings that are good for the community and the world. It boils down, he says, to employing modern technology with the best of compassionate design to create walkable neighbourhoods. Further to this, Suttie has designed a concept plan for the redevelopment and restoration of Woolloomooloo that could house thousands more people while creating a highly appealing, European-style village atmosphere.

Suttie’s CV speaks more to a knockabout pragmatist than a nostalgic idealist. After graduating with a degree in mining engineering from the University of NSW, he worked on large drilling projects for the mines in Western Australia before moving to the UK to work as a stonemason, carpenter and artisan, then studying for a master’s degree in classical and traditional architecture at the University of Notre Dame in the US. It was only after travels through Europe that he developed what he calls his deep love of beauty; his architectural practice, which currently employs about a dozen people, has completed works in a variety of heritage projects – residential, urban and ecclesiastical – across the country.

When I ask him about the history of this 19th-century mansion where we’re sitting – four grand terraces joined by an upstairs colonnade, one of which houses his architectural practice – Suttie breaks into a delighted grin. “I don’t know – but it was once the World’s Biggest Bed [a brothel] and Club 20 [a nightclub],” he says. Suttie goes on to tell the story of two former clients, a couple who, upon visiting his premises, looked around and said, “We met here.” “I don’t know if they met at Club 20 or the brothel,” he says cheekily.

Today’s “starchitects” frequently make their name designing buildings that test the limits of engineering and design – the mania for twisting, curling, gravity-defying, tilting skyscrapers being a case in point – with little regard for how their buildings will mesh in with the surrounding cityscape. Novelty can result in over-scaled buildings that poke out; too much of it, and you risk creating a skyline that looks higgledy-piggledy.

Architect Robert Mills, who is based in Melbourne, says there has been a strong return to classical styles in recent years, with at least 50 per cent of his clients now commissioning homes and buildings in traditional styles. While acknowledging the shortage of skilled artisans such as stonemasons and plasterers, Mills says that automation in trades like stonemasonry is leading to new efficiencies and reduced cost.

Classic architecture has also been hamstrung in the past, he says, because of the false perception it’s somehow “right-wing” to design in this style. “In the past, if you designed in the classical style you’d risk being ostracised by some architects,” he says.

Mills is no anti-modernist. While recognising that some of Harry Seidler’s projects led to regretful demolitions, Mills describes Seidler’s design of the Australian Embassy in Paris as a “phenomenal” piece of modern architecture, and that buildings like Australia Square have withstood the march of time.

It would be absurd to suggest that every new building should be built in a classical style, particularly in new suburbs or streetscapes dominated by modern buildings. It’s in heritage areas, where buildings can be restored, rebuilt and repurposed, that traditional styles really shine.

A growing respect for heritage notwithstanding, we’re still a long way from honouring our architectural history. “The vast majority of architecture students are still taught that modernism or its later developments, based on difference rather than continuity, is the only true way to progress,” notes Robert Adam. “Students are very conventional and do not question what they are taught.”

Today, the only real reminder of Rowe Street from the pre-MLC Centre era is the five-storey Sydney Club building, standing on the corner of Pitt and Rowe (previously known as the Millions Club). With its grand, granite-columned entry, arched windows and classic pediment, the Sydney Club stands as a beautiful reminder of what was – and what could have been. Because had Rowe Street remained intact, there’s not much doubt it would be one of Sydney’s buzziest tourist attractions today.

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