Canberra, Capital of Australia - David Van Zanten

David Van Zanten Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208-2208, USA 847-491-8024 d-van@northwestern.edu

CANBERRA, CAPITAL OF AUSTRALIA PLANNED BY WALTER BURLEY GRIFFIN OF CHICAGO, DESIGNED 1911, BUILT 1914 David Van Zanten, Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

I. Canberra is an unusually gentle national capital and today is much beloved. Construction here negotiates a humble place amid water and hills. It was probably possible only at the moment of its inception (1911) and it laying out (1914-25) – although amid much politicking and many vicissitudes it has only been executed in its general lines.

The city spreads across the valley of the river Molonglo, dammed here and shaped east-west into a chain of five broad lagoons on axis. These are named Lake Burley Griffin after its architect planner, Walter Burley Griffin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s former chief assistant in Chicago. At right angles to this “water axis” is a contrasting “land axis” anchored northward by abrupt Mount Ainslie, a panoramic viewpoint embracing the city southward (looking away from the sun in this hemisphere) facing at the low Capital Hill since 1988 mounded over the permanent Parliament Building bearing above it the eerie outline of the national gathering place Griffin had originally intended here as the pivot of his plan. Two diagonal axes stretch northwest and northeast, crossing the lagoon as and embracing the viewer on Mount Ainslie, linking the government park to two nodes of construction meant originally for municipal and commercial buildings respectively – these leading on to further matrices of residential and industrial development inserted in the hilly landscape.

Built-up areas are restricted to the valley bottoms, the embracing hillsides being left as generous interlocking parklands. Griffin and his brilliant artist-wife Marion Mahony wished to control the color of the foliage on the hillsides to make the city one spreading garden.

Griffin’s clear subdivision of the city and its submergence in the Molonglo landscape proclaims it less a design “solution” than a statement of urban idealism inspired, first of all, by Daniel Burnham’s McMillan Plan for Washington D. C. (1902), working with Charles Follen McKim, and his 1909 plan for Chicago, working with Edward Bennett. Mahony’s perspective of the city from abrupt Mount Ainslie reminds us of the often-reproduced aerial perspective of Chicago’s center by his renderer Jules Guerin seemingly viewed from one of the Wright brothers new devices. Less familiar, perhaps, but more relevant may be Burnham’s own sketch for the Columbian Exposition of 1891 showing a broad domical look-out at the railway entrance with sightlines spreading down his lagoon and through an open colonnade to dissipate across the flat expanse of Lake Michigan. Arriving in Australia in 1913, Griffin explained to the newspapers that his Canberra plan had been inspired by his experience of the Exposition as a teen-ager.

Griffin, however, has internationalized this experience and married it to the recent Anglo-Saxon “garden city” ideal and, beyond that, a statement about democracy giving predominance not to the chambers of parliament on the Molonglo slope, but the dome-like public gathering place at the hilltop. Shiben Banerji compares it to contemporary visions of a “world center” emanating from K. P. C. de Bazel’s “World Capital“ for the Hague to which Berlage compared Canberra after visiting Griffin in Chicago in 1911 and which, Christopher Vernon reminds us, had been published shortly before in the transactions of the 1910 R.I.B.A. city planning conference and in American newspapers.

The Griffins were clear about the social message of their work, he having been a member and then chair of the city planning committee of the Progressive City Club of Chicago led by the sociologist George Hooker and Mahony’s architect-cousin Dwight Perkins. Indeed the Griffins soon made themselves unpopular in Australia criticizing participation in World War I – retreating from the Canberra project in 1921 to the creation of an ideal Sydney suburb Castlecrag pivoting on a hillside open theatre where Marion was active in the 1930’s. They became Anthroposophists and in 1935 they moved to India for a gratifying burst of activity in Lucknow, then in 1937 (after Walter’s premature death) Marion returned to Castlecrag and thence (1938) back to Chicago. They had been good friends of the activist writer Stella Miles Franklin since meeting in Chicago about 1911. At the beginning of his career, in 1904, Griffin said he had made a city plan for Shanghai for a representative at the St Louis World’s Fair which (although now lost) historians speculate might have been a model for this other trans-Pacific city.

II. The story of the conception and acceptance of this extraordinary plans runs thus: After a decade of discussion (1890-1900) a united Commonwealth of Australia embracing the whole continent was proclaimed. In 1908 the Seat of Government Act specified that a new city be founded for it capital in New South Wales no closer than one hundred miles to Sydney. This was followed the next year by the selection of Yass-Canberra, in this Molonglo Valley, and the organization of an international competition for its design (1911-1912). For technical reasons, The Royal Institute of British Architects and the Australian professional associations discouraged their members from participating, but in May, 1912, three leaders of this emerging art were announced as winners: Donat Agache (Paris), third place Eliel Saarinen (Helsinki), second place Walter Burley Griffin (Chicago) first place.

It is instructive to compare these drawings, surviving today in the Australian National Archives. Agache’s third-pace design is a field of bright ideas – an experimental “garden city’ to one side, an airport to the other, neither specified in the competition brief, both today touchingly quaint. But its doesn’t hold together or embrace the landscape. Saarinen’s second-place design is, on the contrary, so tightly compressed with its weave of curves and counter-curves, that it is hard to read or to imagine finding one’s way through. The Griffin’s plan lies, conceptually, exactly between these two, its tight octagonal matrices each encapsulating a function – the capital, commercial and municipal groups tight around the lagoon at the center; industrial, middle-class and elite suburbs beyond them, construction restricted to the valley floors – all clearly legible in Marion’s lucid plan sheet. That brilliance lay in its visual clarity and its symbolic balancing of the man-made and its natural bed. The spread-out city shown was not necessarily a practical place to live, but we must remember that in 1912 all the jurors and Minister of Homes Affairs King O’Malley had to judge were drawings – and this one spoke in its graphic language clearly, eloquently and optimistically. It argues the Griffins’ complex solution using relationships and interwoven suggestions of meaning, like a good piece of poetry. It is a capital, surely – a capital being first of all an idea.

In contrast, Saarinen’s elegant pattern of swirls and counter-swirls in the end has the mysterious attraction of a Persian shawl while Agache’s field of bright but disorganized motifs scattered across the Molonglo map reminds one of sketches scattered across an artist’s drawing board. John Reps reproduces and explains all the known competition plans and it is puzzling to see that these three designs were not the most immediately legible, like Van Buren Magonigle’s, or most practical, like Arthur Comey’s. Yet, in privileging Agache, Saarinen and Griffin, the jurors got things right – and picked the individuals who would lead urban thought and design in their emerging generation. How did these Australian neophytes manage to do so? I can only suggest that it was by rewarding boldness and consistency, although here that boldness and consistency appeared here in three very different forms.

III. The competition brief did not promise that the winner would be employed to execute his project and the Departmental Board of the Department of Homes affairs amalgamate certain ideas from these three projects into a strange concoction made public in October, 1912 – to loud public dissent. Encouraged by this reaction, Griffin travelled to Australia the next summer, 1913, and after much publicity and politicking found himself named Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction on October 18. His job now was to adapt his plan to the actual site and simultaneously to organize a second international competition for the design of the parliament building – duties to be assumed in six months during which he was to reorganize his practice in Chicago and visit Europe to engage jurors for the second competition. These last were, besides the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, John Sulman from Australia (soon replaced by George T. Poole), Otto Wagner in Vienna, Victor Laloux in Paris and Sir John James Burnett in London (invited at Laloux’s suggestion after W. R. Lethaby declined). It is illuminating to parse these choices: Griffin’s initial slate embraces progressive design by very distinct schools: Lethaby, Arts and Crafts; Laloux (famous for his two railroad stations) Beaux-Arts progressivism; Sullivan and Wagner experimentalism in massing and materials (thin marble sheets, for example, on steel frames). The choice of Burnet to replace Lethaby firms this up, he a Beaux-Arts trained Glaswegian experimenting with simplified designs in factories and commercial buildings. (Griffin specifically cites his Kodak House on Kingsway in London in a letter to Wagner.) Their work was what “modernity” looked like in 1913/1914. After their visit Louis Bonnier arranged an exhibition of Griffin’s work rendered by Marion Mahony at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (which drawings were promised next to Otto Wagner in Vienna, but did not make the trip due to the outbreak of World War I) while the mayor of Lyon, Edouard Hérriot, showed duplicates of the Canberra drawings at the Exposition Internationale Urbaine organized in his city in the summer of 1914.

Here, however, the story gets complex: Resistance to the Griffins and their ideas led to the empaneling of a Royal Commission in 1916-1917, which ultimately supported him, and finally to the naming of a Federal Capital Advisory Committee in 1920 of which he was merely one member, leading to his resignation on January 18, 1921. His plan, however, was complete by 1918, revised in many parts but not in its central matrix, and was gazetted on November 19, 1925 – although afterwards only very slowly executed with numerous changes, among them the construction of a “temporary” parliament house by government architect J. S. Murdoch down from Griffin’s site and inaugurated in 1927. However, in June, 1920, the Prince of Wales, on visit, laid the cornerstone of Griffin’s great domical “Capitol” on the top of Capital Hill, Christopher Vernon has found, Griffin being called back to refining his design (to accommodate ten thousand spectators, he stated) but no further work resulted. We see it in George Elmslie’s 1914 project for the parliament house competition, a great circle behind the meeting spaces – Elmslie’s partner William Gray Purcell (evidently in communication with Griffin) telling him that these should merely be a “wall” over which the Capitol would appear.

IV. Until the end of World War II most government offices had remained in Melbourne and Sydney. Then, however, economic expansion of the 1950’s and the lengthy prime ministership of Robert Menzies, the decision was made to seriously move government functions to Canberra. In 1955 a Parliamentary Select Committee studied the question of the city plan and confirmed the Griffin plan, influenced by the planner Peter Harrison who was its advocate and discovered the battered original drawings. In 1957 the leading British city planner and government official, Sir William Holford, spent a month in Canberra (having visited before in 1951 to attend a professional conference), producing a pithy text Observations on the Future Development of Canberra, A. C. T. (1958) supporting the central Molonglo layout of the city and its “garden city” dispersal through the region, but suggesting a road network that included a main highway along the north side of the lagoons (originally meant for a park around a file of cultural buildings). In 1958 the National Capital Development Corporation was created to refine and carry out these projects with Peter Harrsion First Assistant Commmissioner. In 1968 another admirer of the Griffin plan, Paul Reid, was named Director of Architecture. In 1964 the lagoons were finally dammed and shaped and named after the city’s original planner, Griffin.

In 1974 an Act of Parliament fixed the permanent Parliament House site at the top of Capital Hill and a twostage international competition was arranged to select its designer, the leading Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei and the Australian-American designer John Andrews among the jurors. On June 26, 1979 they awarded the commission to the Italian-born American architect Romaldo Giurgola. He moved to Canberra and devoted himself exclusively to this project until its completion in 1988 and staying henceforth, strolling the parkland around his monument almost daily down to his death at 95 in May, 2016. His solution, as has been noted, was a complex if respectful one – he brought the grassy slopes of the hill over his building at its four corners to honor its original natural state, then added a huge steel flagpole outlining with its four legs Griffin’s original projected democratic gathering place. One can still walk right over the seat of government, and enjoy Griffin’s framed axial vistas up, down and across the valley. But we must note that Giurgola only cites Griffin’s democratic space – using an old motif borrowed from his friend Robert Venturi (who submitted a very different project placed among five competition runners-up) and that the park and cultural buildings originally meant to face this ensemble from the north side of the lagoons had already been replaced by a highway – transformations Paul Reid, for one, bitterly resisted.

It is simple, perhaps, to grasp the historical conception of the Canberra plan, in 1911-1920 emerging from the competing Progressivisms of the Burnham and the City Club circles – but more difficult to explain its re-establishment after World War II by Sir William Holford, Peter Harrison, Paul Reid, Romaldo Giurgola and Prime Minister Menzies, in their various ways. One remembers that Giurgola was part of the Philadelphia circle of Venturi and Louis Kahn, the latter with his geometricizing muse Anne Tyng. Her admiration for Buckminster Fuller (who joined them in Philadelphia at the end of his career at the time of the competition) links with the Chicago fascination with geometry of Sullivan and Wright which the Griffins shared.

A simpler explanation would be that the Griffin plan works, both in the sense of fitting the landscape effectively and in that of expressing a shared idea of government, encapsulated in Giurgola’s strangely allusive Gestalt—a Kahnian synthesis of history and place (with a nod to Venturi). That is to say, the basic plan was neither Howard’s and Unwin’s “garden city” nor Burnham’s monumentalism nor de Bazel’s “World Capital” ideal – but instead these all at once, married lovingly to a place. Pushed down into its beautiful natural setting, the Griffin plan is as much about nature as about man and his government; with a scattering of cultural buildings facing across the lagoon to the government complex it is as much about the nation’s people as about its political system. Spread out across the landscape in settlements, it lets its inhabitants forget the hierarchies and symbols of government, if they wish, and pursue their lives as a democratic people.

CHRONOLOGY 1890-1900: Negotiations culminating in the creation of Commonwealth of Australia.

May, 1901: Congress of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors and Others Interested in the Building of the Federal Capital of Australia, Melbourne.

December 14, 1908: Seat of Government Act requiring the capital be located in New South Wales 100 miles or more from Sydney.

1908-1909: Charles Robert Scrivener (Director of Commonwealth Lands and Surveys) explores possible sites recommending three from among which Yass-Canberra (135 miles south southwest of Sydney) is selected in October, 1909.

October 10-15, 1910: Town Planning Conference, London, British-born Australian architect John Sulman lecture “Federal Capital of Australia” on possible design strategies.

April 30, 1911: Competition announced; Minister of Home Affaires King O’Malley with final decision and no commitment to winning designer to supervise execution. Jury members eventually named: John Kirkpatrick, architect; James Smith, engineer; J. M. Cone, surveyor.

July, 1911: Royal Institute of British Architects objects to jury comprised exclusively of Australians and Minister have final decision. Discourages participation by its members.

February 28, 1912: Competition projects due.

May 23, 1912: Competition results announced: First prize: Walter Burley Griffin, Chicago Second prize: Eliel Saarinen, Helsinki Third Prize: Donat Agache, Paris One juror submits different slate; Minister King O’Malley chooses majority slate.

October 25, 1912: Departmental Board of the Department of Homes affairs (Scrivener, David Miller, John Smith Murdoch, Percy Owen) presents alternative Canberra plan, supposedly synthesizing best ideas of these projects. Professional outcry follows.

August 18, 1913: Griffin arrives in Sydney at own initiative, October 18, 1913 appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction for a three-year term under a new government, Griffin effectively answering directly to Minister of Home Affairs. His duties to start in six months, the delay to permit Griffin’s return to Chicago (he leaving November 15, 1913) to reorganize office and his traveling to Europe (March, 1914) to plan competition for design of the parliament building, jurors Australian Sulman (later replaces by George T. Poole), Louis Sullivan, Victor Laloux, Otto Wagner, Sir John John James Burnet – replacing W. R. Lethaby at Laloux’s suggestion.

May-September, 1914: Duplicates of Canberra drawings displayed at Exposition Internationale Urbaine, Lyon, at invitation of mayor Edouard Hérriot under supervision of municipal architect Tony Garnier.

May, 1914: Griffins arrive in Sydney, start work.

September, 1914: Parliament house competition cancelled after War breaks out. Resuscitated momentarily in 1917 with Eliel Saarinen replacing Wagner on the jury.

CHRONOLOGY 1916-1917: Royal Commission investigates Canberra works, finds for Griffin and extends his contract three years.

1918: Revised plan drawn up by Griffin June, 1920: Prince of Wales visits Australia, cornerstone of symbolic Capitol on hilltop laid after consultation with Griffin.

October 30, 1920: Direction of Canberra project placed in hands of Federal Capital Advisory Committee, Griffin one of members. January 8, 1921, Griffin resigns because of this lessening of his authority.

November 19, 1925: Griffin’s 1918 plan gazetted; “temporary” parliament house located near but on Camp Hill below original site and put under construction (1927) by J. S. Murdoch.

1955: Parliamentary Select Committee reports on future of Canberra at suggestion of prime minister Robert Menzies, aided by planner Peter Harrison, admirer of the original Griffin plan. Harrison finds the original drawings, forgotten in storage.

November-December, 1957: respected British urban planner Sir William Holford visits Australia to study execution of plan, in report dated 28 December, 1957, proposes modifications including road system with major route along north side of lagoons and erection of permanent parliament house on southern lakeshore.

(Holford had visited the site earlier in August, 1951.)

March 1, 1958: National Capital Development Commission starts functioning in charge of planning and execution, Peter Harrison First Assistant Commissioner; Peter Reid (also an admirer of the Griffin plan) later Chief Architect.

1964: Lagoon filled, named “Lake Burley Griffin”.

1974: Act of Parliament fixing parliament house at top of Capital Hill”.

December, 1975: Joint Standing Committee of parliament under chairmanship of president of Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives examines erection of permanent parliament building by two stage competition, this announced April, 1979. Jury under chairman Sir John Overall includes I. M. Pei (son of the president of the Bank of China) and Australian architect John Andrews and several members of parliament, first stage submissions to be in by August 31, 1979. Five architects selected to come to Canberra and participate in the second stage. June 26, 1980, Italian-born American architect Romaldo Giurgola announced the winner.

1979-1988: Parliament House built following Giurgola’s design, he having settled in Canberra to supervise its execution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY CANBERRA Sir William Holford, Observations on the Future Development of Canberra, A. C. T.., Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1958 National Capital Development Commission, The Future Canberra, Sydney, n. d.

Roger Pegrum, Bush Capital: How Australia Chose Canberra as its Federal Capital, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, 1983 K. F. Fischer, Canberra: Myths and Models, Hamburg: Institute of Asian Affairs, 1984 John W. Reps, Canberra 1914: Plans and Planners of the Australian Capital Competition, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 Paul Reid, Canberra Following Griffin: A Design History of Australia’s National Capital, Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2002 Wolfgang Sonne, Representing the State: Capital City Planning in the Early Twentieth Century, 2003 Canberra and the New Parliament House, Sydney, Auckland, London, New York: Lansdowne Press, 2009 Shiben Banerji, The Lineages of the Global City, in process

WALTER BURLEY GRIFFIN Peter Harrison, Walter Burley Griffin, Landscape Architect, Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1995.

Anne Watson, Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin: America Australia India, Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 1998 Jeff Turnbull, Peter Y. Navaretti, The Griffins in Australia and India, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 1998 Dustin Griffin, The Writings of Walter Burley Griffin, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008 Alasdair McGregor, Grands Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Camberwell, Victoria: Lant