This month, I had the pleasure of interviewing heritage architect Hector Abrahams about his experience of restoring the home of the College, 145 Macquarie St. Sydney in the mid-1990's. Mr. Abrahams worked as project architect with the firm that undertook the restoration of the 1848 building, Clive Lucas, Stapleton and Partners.

Can I ask what it feels like to step back into 145 Macquarie St. after all this time?

My response is one of relief, it seems to be working, and beautifully cared for, it feels like it did when we left it in the 1990's. I am just delighted that the College has remained committed. The work here started in the early 90's with what was then an innovative historical study, they weren't normally part of things, but we did one here. I was an associate with Clive Lucas and Ian Stapleton, where I had been working since the 80's, it was early to mid-career for me.

What was it like working with the College back then?

The CEO was Don Swinbourne who was very hands-on, very receptive to advice, he knew how to listen to advice. The culture of the College at that time was obviously very participatory, I think it was an unusually positive culture, so we had a lot to do with the archivists, the historians, the operations people, it was a very collaborative exercise. It was a big challenge to devise a scheme that operationally made sense, the College needed open plan workspace. The other thing that was super important was that the College was recommitting to the site, they invested a lot of resources into the finishing and decorating in the important rooms including the furniture.

What were the other biggest challenges you faced in the project?

It was the period of fire orders in the City of Sydney. There had been a backpackers fire in Kings Cross in the late 80's so we got these scary things called fire orders. Clive's [Lucas] instructions would have been to not only be historically authentic - it's a classic restoration - but also to address those more mundane but very important issues. It was an innovative fire strategy, what these days is called a 'fire engineered strategy' and this would have been one of the first major ones done in New South Wales, the first fire engineering that we were aware of in the City. Other challenges were about authenticity. Everything looks in its place now and it all looks right, but there was a lot of discovery and intellectual exercise to unpick the history. It was a challenge that Clive solved, of how to present the house. The house is in four periods and as you move up through it, the way that the joinery is detailed and the way the interiors were presented, reflected the different periods, it's subtle, mostly about the staircase.

It was a very sophisticated Council, they wanted a really polished set of interiors that hung together. The spatial challenge was how to connect the two buildings [145 and 147 Macquarie St.] which were at two different levels. I think it was a successful idea to put the reception desk at the back, for years they'd fought about where to put it at the front of the building - and in the end it seems to work that you make someone interact with a buzzer but they can be seen, that planning concept still works.

Was there anything unexpected found or rediscovered during the work?

There were some very dramatic discoveries. The window on the stair landing, it's curved in two directions because its got an arched head - that was a fabulous thing to discover, it's very sophisticated. It was reconstructed from evidence and was a significant craft achievement as well. The College was very committed to an academic approach, so when evidence came of doors and architraves, we would recover them. We'd say to Don [Swinbourne] 'look what we found' and he said 'well let's go and put it back'. In that sense it is a classic restoration which you don't see so much of and that's why the house feels complete. That was really the objective, to make the house feel complete again, and Clive's idea of putting the glass addition on the back so you could see the back wall of the house and understand that it was a free-standing house. There are historic colour schemes on the back as well and that glazed set of verandas does the work of connecting the levels and the lift and so on, it's a great success.

Was budget ever an issue?

It was tendered at the start of the recession, it was the only time I went to a Council meeting [to discuss the tender result]. It was a very difficult 'Order of work', so we had just the two tenderers. I can remember because we were very good at documenting the works so that you could get lump sum prices and they would build contingencies into those prices. There was only $5000 dollars between the two tenders, basically a dead heat. They [tender winner, A & DR Illes (Sydney) Pty Ltd] appointed a commercial foreman, John Murphy, who wasn't part of their normal team [to run the site]. Murphy was a super organised, tough as nails foreman. It was built live, the whole thing. They just quarantined areas and worked on them. Extraordinary skill. Staff were decanted to 147 Macquarie St. It was around 2 million in the end, and these days it's 20 million worth of work.

So timing was important?

It was done at a time when you could still procure that kind of restoration, at the apex of the restoration movement that everyone was so engaged with. It was heroic in a sense that Victorian interiors with gold leaf and silver leaf [were restored]. It was a real moment in time - to have firms that you could put in competition with other and [to have] the trade access and being able to run cedar architraves on the curves, and the beginning of conservation planning, and also the beginning of fire engineering in the late 80's. Very much a moment in architectural history.

Go on a virtual tour of 145 Macquarie St. Sydney here