Title: James Barnet
Subtitle: The Universal Values of Civic Existence
ISBN: 978 0 9577560 3 8
Pages: 96 + Fold out sections
Format: 230 x 300 mm Paperback
Price: SGD $65

Text by Chris Johnson, Peter Kohane and Patrick Bingham-Hall
Photographs by Patrick Bingham-Hall

James Barnet was Australia’s most prolific architect, and in the breadth and quality of his work – a Victorian architect without peer. His transportation of a singular, unflinching vision of neo-classical aesthetic and High-Victorian virtue from London to the colonies has provided a continuing image of urban New South Wales. Seen from the surrounding wheat fields, sheep runs, or the winding suburban streets of Sydney, his towers and domes nurture a feeling of personal equanimity, of democratic tradition, that subsequent civic architecture has never achieved. This is not so much a ‘failure’ of modern architecture, but a mark of the unalterable spiritual acceptance in the public mind of the classical role of public buildings.

James Barnet has stunning black and white photographs of James Barnet’s best known and most loved buildings, with fold-out sections, drawings and renderings.