ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

Canberra (Australian Capital Territory) provides a showcase of Australian planning and architecture during the 20th century. The first parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia met in Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 398 Melbourne in 1901. An international competition for the federal capital city of Canberra was conducted in 1911 and was won by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin of Chicago. The so-called Departmental Board Plan was under way by 1913, designed by bureaucrats using features assembled from the competition entries. This procedure and its ugly product caused a public outrage, so Griffin visited Australia in late 1913, when he was appointed director of Federal Capital Works. The Griffins thus settled in Australia in May 1914, but their Canberra Plan was frustrated by wartime conditions, by quickly changing governments, and by hostile public servants—the authors of the discarded conglomerate plan. Griffin, having achieved very little, resigned in 1920 ...

The 1901 federation of sovereign states and territories that formed the Commonwealth of Australia centralized cultural developments. A new nationalism subdued regional differences. A new federal capital, Canberra was chosen, as it was equidistant between the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. These two metropolitan cities became the primary settings for major 20th-century architectural movements, although many gems have been built throughout the whole country: the modernist Education Department Building (1982, Perth, Western Australia), by Cameron Chisholm and Nicol; Student Union Building, University of Adelaide (1973, South Australia), by Dickson and Flatten; St Ann’s Geriatric Hospital (1979, Hobart, Tasmania), by Heffernan Nation Rees and Viney; Queensland Art Gallery (1982, Brisbane), by Robin Gibson and Partners; and the contextual “Pee Wees at the Point” restaurant in tropical Darwin (1998, Northern Territory), by Troppo Architects. The most beautifully crafted building in the nati...