This essay explores the central theme of the online exhibition, "An Ideal City? The 1912 competition to design Canberra". It will outline the principal ordering concepts of the exhibition, with particular emphasis on the expression in the competition entries of the contemporary town planning ideas informing the entrants' designs. The winning design by Walter Burley Griffin, for example, drew upon both town planning ideas such as the City Beautiful and Garden City movements, and also may owe some of its inspiration to more esoteric and ancient city design concepts and forms.
This central theme is explored against the topographic and political landscape of the capital site itself. The nature of capital cities and the design elements considered necessary to assert national significance form an important sub-theme. These were prescribed in considerable detail in the material sent to competitors by the Australian government, and allow us to see what they expected their capital city to represent. The creation of a new capital city in a new nation provided an opportunity for idealism, and competitors were encouraged to plan not merely a utilitarian but also an aesthetically satisfying urban space.
The story of the choice of the capital site, while not the central focus of the exhibition, forms a vital framework within which the broader philosophical and design ideas operate. The fate of the Griffin plan under the onslaught of political and bureaucratic opposition and the differing ideas of later town planners as later politicians, bureaucrats and town planners challenged Griffin's vision, is an important coda to the competition story which is developed in the online exhibition.
While the Griffin plan is singled out for discussion, the other, unsuccessful, competitors are also considered. This is the distinctive feature of this exhibition, and one that sets it apart from, on the one hand, exhibitions on the work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin; and on the other, the story of the development of Australia's capital city. The 46 plans taken to the capital site for consideration are briefly described in the online exhibition. All have been rigorously examined, and the ways in which they embody the town planning ideas of the time are demonstrated by town planning historian, Professor John Reps from Cornell University.
Original works by the other finalists are displayed alongside the more familiar images of the Griffin designs, and show in their variety a range of alternative capital cities based on very distinctive visions. So, while the works of Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin have due prominence in the exhibition, they are displayed as far as is now possible within the context in which the original assessors operated in 1912. Viewers can play the game of making their choice among the various plans by the finalists for Australia's capital: a 'Paris on the Molonglo' pictured so winningly in a series of exquisite watercolours by Alfred Agache; a cold and regular Northern European city shown in the works of Eliel Saarinen; or a design by Australian team Griffiths, Coulter and Caswell, the first choice of the assessment panel's chairman. This design 'borrowed' architectural styles from capital cities around the world in a depiction which seems to owe a great deal to the original work of the City Beautiful movement, the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, constructed to a baroque design by the great Chicago town planner and architect Daniel Burnham.
When the six Australian colonies federated in 1901, one of the requirements for the union, embodied in the federal constitution, was that the nation's capital should be a new creation, not one of the capital cities of the existing colonies. While there is an important symbolic element in the establishment of a national capital for a federation, political practicalities were as much responsible as issues of national significance for the creation of the Australian capital. The two major colonies, New South Wales and Victoria, were locked in bitter rivalry. Their capital cities, Sydney and Melbourne, were the grandest of all the Australian cities, with Melbourne, enriched by the gold rushes, having a greater claim to grandeur than Sydney, the oldest capital. The founders of Australian federation, to overcome the reluctance of both colonies to give way to the other in the matter of the selection of a capital city, determined that the Commonwealth of Australia would have its seat in a location to be determined by the Parliament.
The requirements were clear: the new capital would be located in New South Wales, but not closer than 100 miles (200 kilometres) from Sydney. It would be located in a site which would allow a city of grandeur to be built there. The climate at the site should be bracing, not humid, as in those days before air conditioning, it was believed that the mental processes were kept alert by a cooler atmosphere. It should have an adequate water supply, not only for the practical needs of its residents, but also to provide 'ornamental waters' to beautify the city.
From 1902 the search was on to find a site for the capital. Teams of parliamentarians from the Senate and the House of Representatives toured 13 sites in New South Wales. Towns and localities vied with each other to secure the prize of having the national capital located in their area. Unfortunately New South Wales was drought-stricken at the time, which did not help some areas to convince the visitors of their claims. A short list of six localities was drawn up by a Royal Commission - Albury, Armidale, Bombala, Lake George, Orange and Tumut. In 1903 the House of Representatives began to ballot to choose the locality which would contain the capital site. The Bombala region was chosen initially. However, a change of government in 1904 brought a change of mind - Dalgety was to be the favoured site. Artist Lionel Lindsay painted his vision of a future capital there for the popular magazine, the Lone Hand. But political fortunes reversed again in 1905, and the question was thrown open for consideration once again. Three other areas were considered once more: Mahkoolma (near Burrinjuck Dam), Canberra and Lake George. These areas, along with Dalgety and Molonglo, were accordingly visited again in 1906 by parliamentarians. John Gale, the proprietor of the Queanbeyan Age, delivered a paper, 'Dalgety or Canberra which?', which set forth the virtues of the Canberra region in glowing terms:
We have shown that in every essential factor Canberra stands unrivalled. It possesses water supply for all possible requirements; in summer and winter its climate has all the desirable conditions; in accessibility it has decided advantages over Dalgety; in fertility of soil and hygienic conditions nothing is left to be desired; its possession of stone, timbers, clays, and other mineral deposits are close at hand and inexhaustible; and its scenic charms and natural objects are unique and wondrously varied. It is almost impossible to conceive of a site more perfect in all its essentials.
Despite Gale's boosterism, neither the Federal Parliament nor the NSW State Government were easily convinced, and the claims of Dalgety were promoted rigorously. But in the end the claims of the Yass-Canberra region to be the location for the national capital topped a ballot on 9 October 1908, by six votes. Yass-Canberra was defined as a triangle, with Yass at the top corner, Lake George to the east and the Murrumbidgee to the west. It was within this area that the precise location for the new federal capital would be chosen.
The man chosen to determine the most appropriate site within this region was surveyor Charles Scrivener. He was instructed to engage in a preliminary reconnaissance of all possible sites in the Yass-Canberra district; undertake a topographical investigation of a possible territorial water catchment; and prepare a contour survey of a seat of government site. Scrivener and his team completed their task in five months, suggesting four possible sites within a proposed federal territory linked to the Cotter, Queanbeyan and Molonglo catchments. Within this territory of about 1015 square miles (2629 km) he nominated four possible locations for a city: Canberra, Yarrolumla, Mugga Mugga and Jerrabomberra. His preference was for the Canberra valley, described as 'an amphitheatre of hills with an outlook towards the north and north-west, well sheltered from both southerly and westerly winds'. He also nominated four positions for weirs to impound water for ornamental purposes, one of them close to the dam which bears Scrivener's name, and holds back the waters that create Lake Burley Griffin.
In 1910 a major international town planning conference was held in London, and attracted many prominent town planners from around the world. Australia's Sir John Sulman, who had developed his own proposals for what the new Australian capital should be like in a booklet, 'The Federal Capital', published that year, attended the conference and gave a paper. He told the delegates that the Australian government was considering holding a competition for the design of the new capital, and created much interest in the scheme. The significance of this gathering was also acknowledged in the instructions for competitors in the competition announced the following year, who were told that they were to embody in their designs the latest ideas in town planning, with particular reference to those discussed at the London conference.
Conducting a design competition for a city plan on a site the designer would probably not be able to see for himself was - and still is - a well-known practice. The Australian government, in its concern to obtain the best possible plan for its new federal capital, provided competitors with a small wooden crate containing a mass of information on the topography, climate and geology of the site, based largely on Scrivener's thorough surveys. They could also visit a British consular office in the major cities of Europe and America to see a model of the site. We know that this model influenced many of the competitors: the scale was deliberately distorted by a factor of four, to give more topographic interest. Despite the fact that the competitors were informed of this distortion, some of the perspectives submitted along with the basic town plan on the contour map pictured the Australian capital as surrounded by soaring alps instead of the relatively modest eminences that actually exist. The competition's eventual winner, Walter Burley Griffin, was said to have been very influenced by the model on view in Chicago, and he certainly used the landscape forms displayed so graphically on the model to establish a symbolic geometry in his capital plan.
When the 137 designers who competed to create the new Australian capital sat down at their drawing boards, they had in their minds a number of concepts and models as to what a capital city should be like. At the most basic and impressionistic level would be the cities with which they were most familiar, or which to them best represented the spirit of a national capital. Thus an Englishman might think of the order and charm of Wren's London; a Frenchman of the grandeur and glory of Haussmann's Paris, with its wide boulevards and vistas terminated by splendid monuments and fountains; an Italian of the overpowering magnificence of Rome created by the Renaissance architects and Bernini; or an Austrian of the elegance of Vienna, encircled by its grand Ringstrasse. An American would have in his mind's eye the plan of Washington: in its first incarnation as designed by the Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant in the eighteenth century, with its echoes of the grand land axis of Versailles; and more recently the plan by the Senate Park Commission, where leading architects and town planners such as Burnham, Olmsted and McKim worked together to modify the United States capital for the twentieth century. Some might think of a temporary 'city' - the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition site, the White City; others might think of a much older and evolving city, with a medieval heart centred around an ancient cathedral surrounded by narrow curving streets opening onto charming vistas and visual surprises. These places and ideas would for many designers be evocative of a national capital, and it is not surprising that these features were often used in the designs for Australia's capital.
At a more philosophical level, the designer might be allied to a particular school of town planning. He might be an adherent of the new planning philosophy of the Garden City, pioneered at the end of the nineteenth century by the British inventor Ebenezer Howard. Howard's ideas for social betterment through urban planning included leasehold of land in comparatively small-scale communities, where residential areas were separated by 'green belts' from major traffic arteries and the pollution and noise of industrial and commercial areas. He might, on the other hand, feel more affinity with the ideas of the Austrian Camillo Sitte, who believed that human scale and artistic charm had been lost in the mid-nineteenth century drive to impose symmetry and sanitation on urban spaces. His book, 'City Planning According to Artistic Principles' and the influential magazine 'Der Stadtebau' (City Building), in which his followers promoted Sitte's ideas, advocated a return to the charm of medieval cities, with shorter curving streets and the creation of unexpected vistas.
Still others believed that a grand city would inspire its citizens to civic virtue and pride in their urban surroundings. This was part of the motivation behind the City Beautiful movement, which adopted neo-classical architectural forms and baroque planning to inspire awe and create feelings of worth in the citizens of a New World republic, as it depicted them as heirs to the best traditions of the Old World. The 1893 World Columbian Exposition displayed examples of the latest products and the most exotic cultures within the White City, built to a baroque plan by Daniel Burnham. The Exposition, publicised throughout the world, including Australia, some of whose colonies had their own pavilions, delivered a message about progress in the context of grand neo-classical planning, adopted from the countries of Europe by the world's largest democracy. Burnham had trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and his plan paid homage to the tradition he had learned there. From the Chicago Exposition the City Beautiful movement was born, and its influence rapidly became widespread. It can be seen in particular in Australia as early as 1901, when Robert Coulter painted his 'Ideal Federal City on Lake George', which has obvious affinities to some aspects of the White City design. Burnham's ideas received a further boost by his involvement in two prestigious planning tasks: the 1902 Senate Park Commission planning for Washington; and his influential 1908 plan for Chicago.
These are some of the influences that were brought to bear on the planning of a national capital on the site chosen by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia and its servant, the surveyor Scrivener. On this series of sheep paddocks would be inscribed the ideas of one planner, who would be influenced by one or more of the ideas and models described above. The Limestone Plains surrounding the Duntroon homestead, overlooked by Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain, awaited the concepts that would be imposed upon them to create a capital city which would symbolise the new nation of Australia.
At first the competition, especially after Sulman's promotion of the idea at the London conference, was greeted with enthusiasm by the international town planning community. Then, when it was discovered that the judging would be performed solely by Australians, with the ultimate decision to be taken by the flamboyant and eccentric Minister for Home Affairs, King O'Malley, the situation changed. Opposition grew to the extent that the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) barred its members from participating, while the American Institute of Architects also made its disapproval known. Professional standards, they believed, could not be upheld under these circumstances.
While many entrants who belonged to these professional bodies, including Griffin, ignored the ban and disapproval and participated anyway, many others, including many prominent town planners, did not. Some of these included the leading lights of contemporary town planning: Burnham, Abercrombie, Lutyens, Howard and Unwin. In obeying the RIBA's dictate the Garden City advocates from Britain in particular missed the opportunity to put their principles into practice in a major project of capital city creation on a greenfields site. Garden City planners were bitterly disappointed when the chosen plan owed more to the classical geometry of the City Beautiful movement than to Garden City principles, although these were certainly present in the separation of residential areas from major roads and from industrial and commercial areas. By an irony of history, Canberra has become known as a 'garden city' precisely because the original Griffin plan was altered in conformity with subsequent planning fashions. These alterations significantly reduced the impact of Griffin's original plan. But this lay in the future: Australia's chance to have a capital city based on Ebenezer Howard's principles was lost when the Garden City movement's most prominent designers heeded their professional association.
Most of those whose plans were taken to the capital site, and considered by the assessors, did not adhere strictly to one or other of the planning philosophies above. Many used City Beautiful geometry to define axes and to indicate vistas and highlight places of significance. Some added Garden City-style green belts, and planned their cities in circles which were reminiscent of Howard's original Garden City diagram. Others combined radial plans and gridiron plans for diversity. Some were inspired to create the human spaces advocated by Sitte: the plans of Nils Gellerstedt and Ernest Gimson were examples of this.
The plan which won the competition was that of Walter Burley Griffin, landscape architect, of Chicago, Illinois. Griffin, who along with his wife Marion Mahony had worked with the founder of the Prairie School of American architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, submitted a design which owed much to the City Beautiful movement - Griffin was said to have been very influenced by the plan for the White City - and incorporated elements of Garden City planning as well. There is also some evidence, explored by Peter Proudfoot in his recent book, 'The Secret Plan of Canberra', that Griffin and his wife were influenced by more ancient city planning ideas which linked natural forms to metaphysical forces. Griffin's defining of the land axis, in Proudfoot's view, corresponds to the ancient concept of the axis mundi. It could also contain elements of Chinese feng shui siting. Other ancient and non-European planning concepts with a mystical basis which may have influenced Griffin's design are also explored. His thesis has validity in that both Walter and Marion Griffin were adherents of the metaphysical doctrine of Anthroposophy. It would not be surprising if they were influenced by more than physical considerations when planning a site with symbolic associations.
The most successful feature of Griffin's plan, and the one which has best resisted all the alterations and rethinkings of his design since he won the competition on 23 May 1912, was the linking of the natural landforms of the Canberra site - chosen so well by Scrivener - by his land and water axes. No other competition entry displayed this level of consideration for the nature of the site itself. Griffin's plan also reinforced the concept of a democracy, when he sited the 'Capitol', which represented the people, on the central elevation in the city area, with the Houses of Parliament on a lower elevation. Later planners reversed this important symbolism, placing Parliament on the highest eminence. Much of Griffin's symbolic geometry has been lost as planners implemented the fashions of their time. The current planning body for Canberra, the National Capital Planning Authority, is now working to re-establish Griffin's symbolic geometry, and to strengthen again the symbolism he created for a national capital.
| bibliography |
|---|
All materials at this site, both images and text are the property of the NLA and Australian Archives and cannot be reproduced.