Edward Bell and the Interdisciplinarity of Engineering and Architecture in Victorian Sydney

Abstract

Edward Bell, Sydney's City Engineer and Surveyor from 1856 to 1870, challenges our current-day view of the disciplinary framing of architecture and its allied fields. In Victorian Sydney, the boundaries of these disciplines were more fluid than they are today, and Bell viewed architectural projects such as the Botany Pumping Station, Sydney's first Exhibition Hall and even the Sydney Town Hall as not beyond his skills or area of responsibility. At the same time, his influence on the design and construction of much of the city's Victorian infrastructure, including his role in the development of the city's sewerage and water systems, has been under-acknowledged. Works such as the Paddington Reservoir, Thornton's Obelisk and numerous public stairways are some of the urban elements designed by Bell that still exist in Sydney today. Integrated into the urban life of the city, these overlooked elements have become monuments not to their largely unknown designer, but to the mayors and aldermen of his era, after whom they are named. This paper will review some of these projects, exploring the architectural implications of Bell's work in his own time and its ongoing contribution to the urban and architectural heritage of the city of Sydney. Many of Bell's works extended beyond what today would be seen as the jurisdiction of the civil engineer or surveyor and well into the territory of the urban designer and architect. What later were to become distinct specialisations were at the time overlapped, meaning that Bell's work has important implications for concepts of authorship in architecture, the status and appreciation of designed objects and the identity and sociology of the professions.