Sydney Open sneak peeks at city's best-loved buildings starting to sell out

Nicola TrotmanDecember 8, 2020

Sydney Open offers the opportunity to go behind the scenes of some of Sydney’s best-loved buildings during the first weekend of November.

Organised by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales as part of the Sydney Architecture Festival, Sydney Open has three feature events: Sydney Open Night, Focus Tours and City Pass.

Sydney Open night is a free event held on Friday November 2 at 6pm with inspections of five sites, including the Chief Secretary’s building designed by architect James Barnet, Hyde Park Barracks Museum designed by Francis Greenway, On Seven at David Jones, Parliament house and St James’ Church.

Focus Tours will be led by the buildings' architects and owners and will run all day Saturday, November 3, with prices starting from $30.

Some of the buildings that can be viewed include two Sydney offices BVN Studio and Challenger workplace.

Challenger won the 2012 RAIA NSW interior architecture award and made it onto the 2009 World Architecture interiors short list.

Other buildings in the Focus Tours include the newly completed Cranbrook Junior School at Rose Bay, The Jack House at Wahroonga, the Kharkov House at Bellevue Hill  – and even tour of platforms and tunnels at Central Station, but that's been already sold out.

 The last opportunity to participate in Sydney Open is the City Pass on Sunday November 4.

City passes for the general public start from $40 and $30 for concession and members.

Participants are provided with a map and a City Pass wristband that gives them access to 50 of Sydney’s CBD buildings.

One of the 50 buildings is the $667 million development 1 Bligh Street, Sydney’s first six-star green star office tower.

Other buildings that can be viewed include Government House, Deutsche Bank Place, Challenger Workplace and the Central Local court.

A full list of the buildings available for viewing for Focus Tours and City Pass can be viewed on the Sydney Open website

Nicola Trotman

With a penchant for the written word, Nicola has built a career doing just this – now Creative Director at thriving Melbourne-based PR agency, Greenpoint Media.

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