MOH 2008 HAS CONCLUDED

American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony brought Australia not just the design of Canberra, the nation's new capital city but also a series of dramatic formal architectural inventions and renewed appreciation for the Australian landscape.

Born in 1876 at Maywood, near Chicago, Walter Burley Griffin graduated in 1899 from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where under the direction of Nathan Ricker, architectural education centred around tectonic mastery and invention. Griffin was also a student of landscape architecture. While working with Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright between 1901 and 1906, Griffin carried out private commissions and landscape designs of his own, finally setting up his own practice in 1906.

Alongside Griffin in Wright's Oak Park office was Marion Lucy Mahony. Born 1871, Mahony was, in 1894, the second woman to graduate in architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A brilliant draftsperson, illustrator and designer, Mahony was responsible for many of the exquisite drawings of Wright buildings published in the 1910 Wasmuth folio and which brought him international acclaim. In Wright's office from 1895 until 1909, Mahony completed several Wright commissions after he removed to Europe with a client's wife.

In 1911, Griffin and Mahony entered the international design competition for Canberra, the new Federal capital and shortly afterward they married. In 1912, Griffin was announced as the winner. By 1914, Griffin, Mahony, Roy Lippincott (Griffin's brother-in-law) and George Elgh had moved to Australia, setting up office in Melbourne. While Griffin for seven years was Federal capital director of design and construction he also maintained a private practice in Melbourne.

Designs for the Summit and Glenard estates in Eaglemont were followed by Cafe Australia (1916, demolished) and Newman College (1915-18). The Griffins also built in Eaglemont their own tiny 'doll-house', Pholiota, from Knitlock, the precast concrete block and roof tile system which Griffin had patented in 1917. After Griffin's controversial resignation from the Canberra appointment, he continued to develop the Melbourne practice. The seven-storey office building Leonard House, Elizabeth Street (1922-23, demolished) had an innovative curtain wall facade. The Capitol Theatre (1924) contained an extraordinary atmospheric stepped ceiling with coloured concealed lighting, simultaneously expressionist and archetypal in its monumentality. It was the firm's most substantial commission.

In 1924, the Griffins left Melbourne to live in Castlecrag, an estate in Sydney which the firm had designed in 1921 and which contained several Griffin-designed rock and concrete houses. Through the 1920s and early 1930s, the Griffins designed more of these landscape-sensitive houses. After 1929, with partner Eric Nichols, the Griffins designed over fifteen municipal incinerators for sites in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Ipswich, Queensland. After an invitation in 1935 to design buildings for the University of Lucknow, the Griffins briefly settled in India. They were entranced by Indian culture which they found had sympathy with the anthroposophical beliefs which had developed coincidentally with designing incinerators.

Tragically, Griffin died of peritonitis in Lucknow in February 1937. Mahony returned briefly to Castlecrag and then to Chicago in a bid to continue practising. Before she died in 1961, Mahony wrote The Magic of America, an unpublished account of her life with Griffin which included their efforts to forge a new and democratic architecture for Australia.

Source: "A guide to Melbourne architecture", by Philip Goad, 1999, p. 246. The Watermark Press, Sydney.