Elizabeth Farrelly

In her role as critic and commentator, Farrelly has had reviews of books and exhibitions published in a range of journals. She has also been interviewed by the television and radio media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the BBC World Service. Reviews include "Superior Seidler - Review of Harry Seidler" in Architectural Review (London). Interviews include for the programs of Philip Adams, Mike Carlton, David Marr, Kerry O’Brien, Margaret Throsby, and Alan Saunders.

Her portrait by Mirra Whale was a finalist in the 2015 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Contributions for the general public appear in newspapers such as the New Zealand Herald and the National Business Review (NZ). For The Sydney Morning Herald, for which she writes a weekly column and regular essays. The essay on "the destructive myth of professionalism" was noted as among the editor's best comment pieces of 2015. Critiques concerning other significant Australian buildings include those relating to proposed changes to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the proposed new home at Parramatta for Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.

Farrelly has been invited to speak at a wide range of public events, including panels, symposia, conferences, and festivals. Examples include as speaker in 2004 and 2005 on "Sydney's Working Harbour" at the Working Harbour Forum in the Sydney Town Hall; in July 2007 at the Byron Bay Writers Festival; in May 2009 and 2013 at the Sydney Writers' Festival; in October 2010 and 2015 at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in the Sydney Opera House in October 2011 at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas; in October 2012 as panellist at the University of Sydney's Sesquicentenary Colloquium Dinner, where her topic was "Dreaming Spires: Architecture and the learning game"; in 2011 and 2012 as speaker at the Art After Hours program in the Art Gallery of New South Wales; in May 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia on "Writing Architecture"; in August 2014 as keynote speaker at the Green Buildings Conference in South Africa; in October 2015 for the year's final Utzon lecture at the University of New South Wales on "Architecture and Morality," exploring the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in architecture; in 2015 at the New Zealand Institute of Architects and on "Beauty" at the St James Institute in Sydney; in 2018 on "Architecture, cities and houses, design, the arts, planning, the environment and social commentary" at Sydney University's Sydney Centennial Symposium: "Cathedral Thinking – Designing for the Next Century".

In Sydney, she served as an independent Councillor of the City of Sydney from 1991 to 1995, where as a member of planning committees and especially interested in the quality of the city's public spaces. She was the inaugural chair of the Australia Award for Urban Design, an award "established to recognise recent urban design projects of high quality in Australia and to encourage cities, towns and emerging settlements of all sizes to strive similarly for improvement". She served as a juror for design awards such as Parramatta Design Excellence Awards and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Awards.

Farrelly practised as an architect in London until 1988, where she once designed a carport, working at Pollard Thomas and Edwards Architects, London; at JASMaD Architects, Auckland; and Warren and Mahoney, Christchurch.

As a professional architecture critic, Farrelly has quoted a study saying that architecture is "the most public art form and, curiously, the least subject to public debate" but that its task is to "distinguish the good, the bad and the reasons". As an urban design professional, she wrote: "Towns are public things. They centre on shared delight, with roosting space not just for the rich but for all, and not just for the body, but the soul." Her essays have been published internationally in specialist, professional and academic journals, including The Architectural Review, for which she was assistant editor and contributor from 1985 to 1987 and The Architects' Journal (London); The Architecture Bulletin; Architecture Australia; Architectural Theory Review; Architectural Record (New York); Architectural Design (Moscow); Metropole (New York); Statement (The Hague); and Bauwelt (Germany).

Farrelly was born in Dunedin, New Zealand and trained as an architect in Auckland. She left New Zealand in 1983 for London, moved to Sydney in October 1988 and became an Australian citizen in 1991. She holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Sydney. Her thesis examined of the intellectual, cultural and political background to development control in Sydney's city centre from 1900–1960.

Elizabeth Margaret Farrelly, born 1957 in Dunedin, New Zealand, is a Sydney-based author, architecture critic, essayist, columnist and speaker who was born in New Zealand but later became an Australian citizen. She has contributed to current debates about aesthetics and ethics; design, public art and architecture; urban and natural environments; society and politics, including criticism of the treatment of Julian Assange. Profiles of her have appeared in the New Zealand Architect, Urbis, The Australian Financial Review, the Australian Architectural Review, and Australian Geographic.