page_title: Architecture of Sydney
section_title: Skyscrapers
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Sydney / Skyscrapers
caption_attribution_description: Sydney skyline
context_page_description: The architecture of Sydney, Australia’s oldest city, is not characterised by any one architectural style, but by an extensive juxtaposition of old and new architecture over the city's 200-year history, from its modest beginnings with local materials and lack of international funding to its present-day modernity with an expansive skyline of high rises and skyscrapers.
  Under the tenure of early nineteenth-century Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the works of Francis Greenway were the first substantial buildings for the fledgling colony. Later prominent styles were the Victorian buildings of the city centre created out of local Sydney sandstone, and the turn of the century Federation style in the new garden suburbs of the time.
  With the lifting of height restrictions in the post-World War II years, much of central Sydney's older stock of architecture was demolished to make way for Modern high rise buildings – according to Singh d'Arcy, in The Apartment House, "From the 1950s onwards, many of Sydney's handsome sandstone and masonry buildings were wiped away by architects and developers who built brown concrete monstrosities in their place.
context_section_description: With 146 skyscrapers over 90m, Sydney has the largest skyline in Australia. Height restrictions were lifted in the 1950s and the AMP Building at Circular Quay became Australia's tallest building several years later. The late 1980s and early to mid-1990s saw a skyscraper boom in Sydney, but height restrictions limited future buildings to the height of 235 metres, in part due to the close proximity of Sydney Airport.  The largest structure is Centrepoint Tower standing at 309 metres, containing restaurants and observation decks. Although both the MLC Centre and World Tower are higher measured to roof at 228m and 230m respectively, the tallest conventional skyscraper measured to its spire tip is the Citigroup Centre at 243m, completed in 2000. Crown Sydney, currently under construction in Barangaroo, will surpass all of these buildings (with the exception of Sydney Tower) upon its completion as Sydney's tallest building at 271.3 m (890 ft).
caption: View of several of Sydney's tallest skyscrapers from the east
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