This thesis argues that Walter Burley Griffin's Capitol as a place of popular congregation on a prominent city site had a critical place in his design for Australia's Federal Capital It offers an intensive and critical reflection on the nature, origin and cultural implications of the Capitol in the context of Canberra's subsequent planning and development. The Capitol represented the essential idea from which he constructed an organic design, integrated with the site conditions and following Sullivan's famous dictum Form follows function. It signified organic democracy, 'a grass roots view' which Griffin shared with Sullivan, rather than the 'top down view' of the mandated power of Government. In order to provide an understanding of how these principles informed Griffin's design, Sullivan's and Griffin's published and unpublished writings are critically reviewed for evidence of the convergence of ideas and agreement on fundamental principles. Resonance with these principles was found in the Competition Drawings and the Original Report entered in the Competition by Griffin. The analysis also drew upon an extensive critical review of sources such as Marion Mahony Griffin's Magic of America, parliamentary papers, archival records, personal papers, and the published literature of Australian and American scholars on Sullivan and Griffin. Sources pertaining to historical movements in architecture and town planning and narratives on architecture for government also formed part of this critical review. The conclusion is that when the desires of the Commonwealth Government were focused by its chief architect on Griffin's Capitol site as the place which should be occupied by Parliament House, the nadir was reached for Griffin's original concept. The vision supplanted, the unravelling of Griffin's organic city plan, with its connections with the ideas of Louis Sullivan, began. Other ideologies began to be introduced with other relationships of form and function, and cost to the organism which was Griffin's city .
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/258140 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Willett, Rosemarie Elizabeth, Built Environment, Faculty of Built Environment, UNSW |
| Publisher | Publisher:University of New South Wales. Built Environment |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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