On November 2018, the Icelandic composer and ‘multi-instrumentalist’ Ólafur Arnalds walked onstage at Canberra Theatre and offered his first impression of the city before a packed house. ‘As we landed in your elusive capital,’ he began, ‘I wondered if we’d arrived in the right place. It felt as if we were in the middle of nowhere.’ Clearly enjoying himself, Arnalds grinned, before declaiming with one arm raised: ‘It’s such a beautiful place but it doesn’t look like a capital city.’ The audience erupted in laughter.

Canberrans, long accustomed to the slightly mystified response of prominent international visitors—US author Bill Bryson famously dismissed the city as ‘a scattering of government buildings in a man-made wilderness’—no longer took offence. They’d learnt to embrace what Romaldo Giurgola, chief architect of Parliament House, admiringly described as Canberra’s ‘generosity of space’, a quality he believed was like no other city in the world.⁷⁴