Design and Art Australia Online

Sydney Baggs (1930–) graduated from Sydney Technical College, registered with the NSW Board of Architects, joined the RAIA and married Joan Baggs, all in 1952. He worked first for RM Joy and Pollitt on hotel projects for Tooth & Co, then joined John W. Roberts as an associate from 1953 to 1958. From 1958 to 1975, he and Roberts were partners. During the 1960s, he specialised in theatre and cinema design and fire stations, including the Newsluxe theatrette and Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, and a training college for the NSW Board of Fire Commissioners. He also designed three substantial residences, at Darling Point, Palm Beach and Edgecliff, for Hoyts directors Earnest and Dale Turnbull. He gained a graduate diploma in landscape design from the University of NSW in 1970 and later received his M.Arch and a doctorate from the same university. From 1975–1986 he was a senior lecturer with the UNSW School of Landscape Architecture, teaching and researching on landscape planning and design, environment impact assessment, and the history and prehistory of landscape, along with supervising masters candidates for the Graduate School of the Built Environment. In 1981, he founded the Geotecture International Association and the Geotecture journal, of which he was editor-in-chief for 10 years. In 1985, he became a visiting research fellow to Cambridge University’s Martin Centre for Architecture and Planning, and gave a series of lectures to the Kirghizian Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences to implement a programme of earth-covered community buildings to extend the capital city of Kirghizia (now Kirghistan), Frunze (now Bishkek), into the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Since 1986 he also has been practising as joint managing director of ECASpace Design Pty Ltd, designing (in collaboration with son David Baggs) hundreds of earth-sheltered and above-ground, passive solar earth brick buildings for sites around Australia. He was Australian organiser of the First International Conference on 'Energy Efficient Buildings with Earth Shelter Protection’ in 1983, a member of the organising committee for all subsequent international conferences on Geotecture (1984-1992) and the International Symposium on Earth-reinforcement Practice, Japan (1992). He also has produced a design proposal for a new Australian eco-city, an ecological health resort of four hotels and condominiums and an eco-village. In 1993, he addressed the Australian Institute of Engineers and the Royal Society of New South Wales on his concept for an earth-sheltered urban redesign of the City of Sydney to create a healthy, garden-city for the next century. In 1994, he helped organise and gave an opening address to the Royal Society Summer School on Cities of the Future. Often collaborating with wife Joan Baggs, he has written more than 70 publications, including The Healthy House (1996, 2005, London: Thames & Hudson; Sydney and New York: HarperCollins); Geotecture and Environment; Environmental Impact Assessment and Evaluation; Australian Earth-Covered Building (1985, 1991 and 2005, Sydney: University of NSW Press); The Underworld in Myth, Magic and Mystery (2003, Bowkers, USA) and Mysteries of Art, Architecture and Landscape (in preparation).
Sources
—Baggs, Sydney. 2004. Website CV http://members.ozemail.com.au/~docsyd/index.html
—Johnson, Paul Alan and Susan Lorne Johnson. 1996 onwards. Sydney Baggs interview for Architects of the Middle Third program. Sydney: University of NSW.
Sydney Baggs was emailed the above wording in January 2005.
The above information was cross-checked by Sydney Baggs in January 2005.

Writers:

Davina Jackson

Date written:

2015

Last updated:

2015