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Rhetorical Analysis of The Quadrandgle, The University of Sydney

Location: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/about/quadrangle.shtml

Refer to attached photographs.

The Quadrangle at the University of Sydney is worthy of rhetorical analysis like any other construction. There are messages throughout the building, placed intentionally or otherwise which construct an impression, overall and in parts, which impacts those within in a number of ways. These aspects of this building will be examined in detail to further highlight its worthiness for such an analysis.

The Quadrangle (the Quad) is the name of a group of sandstone buildings constructed and arranged together in what is called a quandrangle, and can be found on the peak of the hill within the Camperdown campus of the University of Sydney in Sydney, NSW [1]. Construction was started in 1855 in a much younger city of Sydney - farmland was given to the University for it's eventual complex of teaching buildings. Edmund Blacket began the project as an emulation of the prominent universities of England. This decision to imitate them in style was a decision in highlighting and promoting the future university's status as a part of the upper echelons of the educated elite. Gothic revival style, a staple of Oxford and Cambridge, may have represented more than simply elegance to Blacket, indeed, a construction on such scale and of huge investment signified a strong belief in the future of the young city of Sydney[2].

Although some features of the architecture of the building were never completed, such as half of the Quad being still without a cloister (an enclosed walkway), the philosophy behind the designs of the University - integral to the design of the Quad itself - for example the "provision for residential colleges to be established around the main buildings by the four religious denominations" [4], and a strong focus on the classics, were achieved exactly as envisaged.

Although the emulation in construction was never completed to Blacket's designs, the building has remained one of Sydney's most impressive pieces of architecture.

Walking through the Quad today doesn't fail to evoke some response, even from a frequent visitor of seven years. The scale of the building is impressive and its ideal of being of the highest standards can be felt as you stroll by giant replica spears, gargoyle and grotesque faces, detailed copies of ancient Greek facades, and sit in lecture halls a hundred and sixty years old with minor and functional retouches.

The embellishments on the arches and door frames, the elegant stairs and tall towers, even the slate roofs and lead lined windows, are features of a consciously constructed environment - and they are all so alien to my own general environment that I find myself distracted by the history of it, by the nature of it. I get a sense that though we utilise this building today for our own purposes and although we make good use of it we are so far removed from what it was that we would be even more impressed by it were we able to see it in it's original form - freshly constructed, with rooms used exactly for their intended purposes.

Having said that, it feels like a building that has a long future. Everything that hearkens to the past builds up this impression. The sandstone, worn smooth in some spots, the marble stairs worn down by so many feet, the metal fittings some polished by countless hands. To the human mind something that has stood for so long should, or will, continue to stand for a long time to come.

Bibliography:

[1] http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=200804405;res=IELAPA

[2] http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=2431004

[3] http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/UNI/UNI-002.htm

[4] http://sydney.edu.au/documents/about/heritage/gcp_vol1.pdf