This thesis argues that the significance of apartments in Sydney's urban history has not been recognised due to a cultural resistance to apartment living. This lack of acknowledgement has masked the urban, social and architectural impact of the apartment building type in Sydney's history. As an interdisciplinary reading of the development of the purpose-built apartment building in Sydney since its inception in 1900, the thesis is premised on a desire to use the apartment building as a vehicle to tell an alternative housing history to the more commonly told one of house and garden. In the process, it provides a different story of the city's development through the lens of the apartment building and challenges cultural prejudices against apartment living. The research documents the growth and changes of apartments, tracking their location, diversity of type and scale across the Sydney metropolitan region. The research analyses prototypical and generic apartment buildings in the context of the city's history. Drawing on the intersection of eras and themes as a method of critical inquiry, the thesis covers aspects of domestic debates, market, regulation, scale, demography, geography distribution, design and typology, traversing a time period of 1900 to 2008. The thesis explores the debates for and against apartment living in Sydney, emphasising the roles played by apartments in the broader discourses of Australian cultural and design history. The thesis concludes that after more than a century, the debates between apartment and cottage living continue to rage. In systematically providing a trajectory for the history of apartments from ideology to typology, this thesis establishes a place for apartments in Sydney's urban and cultural history; and simultaneously provides a deeper historical context to assist the process of better understanding and responding to the contemporary debate about high-density living and its consequences for the life of the city. Despite the size of its largely undocumented subject, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of its rationale: to use analysis of a specific, controversial building type to provide new insights into Sydney's urban history, ideologies and built forms.

This thesis argues that the significance of apartments in Sydney's urban history has not been recognised due to a cultural resistance to apartment living. This lack of acknowledgement has masked the urban, social and architectural impact of the apartment building type in Sydney's history. As an interdisciplinary reading of the development of the purpose-built apartment building in Sydney since its inception in 1900, the thesis is premised on a desire to use the apartment building as a vehicle to tell an alternative housing history to the more commonly told one of house and garden. In the process, it provides a different story of the city's development through the lens of the apartment building and challenges cultural prejudices against apartment living. The research documents the growth and changes of apartments, tracking their location, diversity of type and scale across the Sydney metropolitan region. The research analyses prototypical and generic apartment buildings in the context of the city's history. Drawing on the intersection of eras and themes as a method of critical inquiry, the thesis covers aspects of domestic debates, market, regulation, scale, demography, geography distribution, design and typology, traversing a time period of 1900 to 2008. The thesis explores the debates for and against apartment living in Sydney, emphasising the roles played by apartments in the broader discourses of Australian cultural and design history. The thesis concludes that after more than a century, the debates between apartment and cottage living continue to rage. In systematically providing a trajectory for the history of apartments from ideology to typology, this thesis establishes a place for apartments in Sydney's urban and cultural history; and simultaneously provides a deeper historical context to assist the process of better understanding and responding to the contemporary debate about high-density living and its consequences for the life of the city. Despite the size of its largely undocumented subject, this thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of its rationale: to use analysis of a specific, controversial building type to provide new insights into Sydney's urban history, ideologies and built forms.