The judges of the 1912 competition had a huge task. A total of 137 entries, adding up to 500 drawings, plans, and even plaster models, filled the ballroom of Melbourne's Government House to overflowing.
A shortlist of 46 designs was drawn up. The three judges took photographs of these to the Limestone Plains, to assess against the landscape.
The survival of these 46 photographic versions presents a unique cross-section of the best, and the worst international urban planning at the time. Here are both the origins of Canberra as a city, and the directions it might have taken if another winner had been chosen.
The judges had to consider several aspects of each plan. Did it meet the listed requirements? Did it take account of storm water and drainage? Did it give sufficient area to parks and gardens, and allow the creation of ornamental waters? Were residential areas separated from heavy traffic and industry? Did it provide grandeur? Was it properly adapted to the landscape? Did it use the landscape to reinforce the symbolism of a national capital? All these and other technical considerations were in the judges' minds as they assessed the competition entries.
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With few exceptions the plans submitted are up to the standard of the best of the modern attempts at city planning ... The Government of the Commonwealth may well congratulate itself upon a set of plans which would be admired anywhere, and when finally carried out future generations will be proud of the foresight of those who aimed at placing a beautiful capital city upon a supremely beautiful and suitable site.
The 46 plans were taken to the capital site, and exhibited along with those of the other competitors in Melbourne once the results of the competition were announced. Below are some of the original paintings by the finalists and the minority judge's choice, while the 46 plans taken to the site are summarised by Professor John Reps of Cornell University.
| summary of the 46 plans |
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Alfred Agache was a native of Tours, and was trained as an architect at the cole des Beaux-Arts. He also studied at the Collge Libre des Sciences Sociales, and served as the head of mission for the Muse Sociale at the 1904 St Louis World's Fair. He then began a career as a social reformer using city planning to achieve that end.
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He opened his own office in 1910 and in 1912 won a prize for his plan for Dunkerque. He later won prizes for his 1920 extension of Paris and City Gardens in Reims (1921). He drew up town plans for a number of French cities, but his detailed master plan of Rio de Janiero was his great work.
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Charles Caswell was an engineer who brought expertise in sewerage construction to the design team of Griffiths, Coulter and Caswell.
Robert Charles Gibbon Coulter was responsible for the co-ordination of the architectural and artistic features of the team's plan, and painted the perspectives which accompanied the entry.
Walter Scott Griffiths was a survey draftsman, whose contribution to the team effort was that of town planner. After the capital competition he pursued a career in town planning, and planned a number of new towns.
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Eliel Saarinen was a graduate of the Department of Architecture in Helsinki Polytechnic Institute. With Herman Gesellius and Armas Lindgren, he gained early fame with the partnership's design for the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Saarinen achieved individual prominence with his design for Helsinki railway station. He opened his own office in 1907.
For Saarinen, 1911 was a busy year for town planning. He wrote a detailed commentary on the planning of Budapest, and served as a consultant to the Town Planning Committee of the City of Tallinn, Estonia, advising on a town planning competition. He only learned of the Australian federal capital competition in mid November, and regretted that he had not had more time to spend on it.
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Saarinen remained interested in city planning all his life, making his most important contributions in Helsinki. He also achieved international renown as an architect, moving to the United States in 1923. He set forth his urban planning theories in a book published in 1943, The City, Its Growth, Its Decay, Its Future.
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Bernard Maybeck (1862-1957) came from an artistically gifted New York family of German origin. He went to Paris to study architectural carving when he was 19, but decided to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts instead. He returned to the United States in 1886, working first in New York, then in Kansas City and Berkeley, California, where he became an instructor in drawing and architecture at the University of California.
While at the university he organised a competition to design the campus, and made recommendations for suburban development around Berkeley. He later produced two town plans and college campus plans. He became associate architect for San Francisco's Golden Gate International Exposition in 1937, and was also a member of the Berkeley city planning commission. He was awarded the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal in 1951.
Gellerstedt studied civil engineering at the technical institute in Gteborg between 1894 and 1898, then worked in the City of Stockholm public works office until 1902, when he established an Office for Local Government Engineering.
He was involved in a number of urban planning projects throughout his career, winning several prizes in city planning competitions. He was responsible for city plans or partial plans for over a hundred cities.
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Gimson was trained as an architect in Leicester. He was influenced by William Morris and became associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.
His building designs and two entries in architectural competitions reflect the natural and unpretentious Arts and Crafts style. This is particularly true of his town plan and building designs for Canberra. Later in his career he concentrated on furniture design rather than architecture and town planning.
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| onwards to section 4: The Winner |
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