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MEDIA RELEASE –
Walter Burley Griffin’s theories brought
to life by his Grandnephew.
MELBOURNE. 14 May, 2008. When in 1912 he won the
international competition to design a new capital city for
Australia, Walter Burley Griffin became perhaps the
most important architect in Australian history.
Griffin had risen to prominence as a member of the
famous “Chicago School”, working in the practice of
Frank Lloyd Wright, although he notoriously split with
his former mentor in 1906.
When Griffin later won the Canberra commission and
became front page news in the New York Times, this
was apparently too much for Wright to bear, and the
two never spoke again.
In later years Wright would downplay Griffin’s talents
and denigrated him as a mere “draughtsman”.
But Griffin was unquestionably much more than that, and his architectural and
planning feats stand as testament to the fact. Nowhere in the world is his legacy more
readily seen than in Australia.
Buildings such as Melbourne’s Capitol Theatre and Newman College, Canberra itself,
the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag, and the NSW towns of Leeton and Griffith are
among the many towns, suburbs and buildings which were the product of Griffin’s
talents.
He established in his day a reputation as a great architectural and design theorist, and
was a passionate writer and lecturer, but Griffin’s body of thought has never been
available in a single volume until now.
This month, Cambridge University Press Australia will publish The Writings of Walter
Burley Griffin - a work of great design in its own right. 512 large-format pages on
high-grade art paper throughout. The book also showcases many of the buildings and
original designs that both Griffin and his wife Marion Mahoney produced.
Griffin’s grandnephew Dustin Griffin has scoured the archives of many diverse
institutions to compile this definitive volume.
All 71 pieces of writing have been thematically categorised under ten headings to
reflect the variety and interrelations of his professional interests.
The material is predominately Australian, with chapters including: Canberra (including
the text and drawings from his successful application for the design of the city);
Designing the House; Landscape Architecture; Architecture and Politics; and the
Future of Architecture.
Dustin Griffin says that what emerges most strongly from the writings is Griffin’s
“fundamental conviction, mediated through his reading of social reformers and
architectural writers, that the architect has a crucial role in understanding his or her
society and expressing its needs.”
“In response to this conviction, Griffin developed a set of principles, among them the
need to build in harmonious relationship with the natural setting, the importance of
neighbourhood, or domestic community, and his idea of the ‘small house’”
It would seem Griffin’s idea’s are as relevant in the early days of the twenty-first
century as they were in the early days of the twentieth.
The editor, Dustin Griffin has media experience and is available for interview by phone
from the US. He is based at New York University.
For further information, to discuss extracts, images for reproduction and interviews,
please contact:
Adam Ford
Cambridge University Press
aford@cambridge.edu.au
ph (03) 8671 1451
mob 0417307991
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