Walter Burley Griffin

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Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin (Sydney 1930)

Walter Burley Griffin (born November 24, 1876 in Maywood , Illinois , † February 11, 1937 in Lucknow , India ) was an American architect and landscape designer. By far his best-known work is the development plan for the Australian capital Canberra . He also became famous for the development of the L-shaped floor plan and the carport as well as for the first use of reinforced concrete . He was influenced by the so-called Prairie School ( Prairie Houses ) and developed his own modern style from it. He worked closely with his wife, Marion Mahony Griffin , throughout most of his professional career . Over the course of 28 years, the Griffins collectively designed over 350 buildings, landscaping and urban development projects, including new building materials, interiors, furniture and other household items.

Childhood and studies

Griffin was born in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago . He was the eldest of four children of insurance agent George Walter Griffin and Estelle Griffin. The family moved twice, first to Oak Park , then to Elmhurst . The young Griffin showed an interest in landscaping and gardening; his parents allowed him to design the garden of their new home in Elmhurst. After graduating from Oak Park High School , he planned to study landscape architecture . But the landscape gardener Ossian Cole Simonds advised him to pursue a more lucrative profession. Griffin therefore studied architecture at the University of Illinois . The study program was headed by Nathan Clifford Ricker, an architect trained in Germany who placed particular emphasis on the technical aspects of architecture. Griffin also took courses in horticulture and forestry while studying architecture .

Career in Chicago

After completing his studies, Griffin moved to Chicago and worked as a draftsman for the progressive architects Dwight H. Perkins, Robert C. Spencer Jr. and H. Webster Tomlinson for two years. Griffin's employers followed the Prairie School , which is characterized by horizontal lines, flat roofs with wide overhanging eaves, solid structures and sparse use of ornamentation. Louis Sullivan was a major influence on the Prairie School, and Griffin was an admirer of his work, as well as his architectural philosophy that buildings should be devoid of historical models.

In July 1901, Griffin passed the Illinois State Architectural License Exam, which allowed him to begin working as an architect. He began working in Oak Park for the famous Frank Lloyd Wright . Although he never made it as a partner, Griffin has overseen many of Wright's projects. From 1905 he contributed to the design of the surroundings of Wright's buildings. Wright allowed his employees to take on even smaller jobs. Griffin's love for Wright's sister Maginel went unrequited despite the marriage proposal.

At the beginning of 1906, Griffin opened his own architectural office after a dispute with his employer. In 1905 Wright had been in Japan for five months , and Griffin had taken over the reins during that time. When Wright returned, he accused Griffin of having exceeded his competencies as he had completed numerous assignments and brought his own plans to several others. Wright had borrowed money from Griffin to finance the trip, and he tried to pay off his debts with Japanese works of art. Griffin sensed that Wright would not make him his partner and resigned.

Griffin's first independent contract was landscaping for the State Normal School in Charleston, Illinois , now Eastern Illinois University . In autumn 1906 he designed the first house with a very cheap and easy to build L-shaped floor plan. From 1907 another 13 of these houses followed in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood. Seven of them were built on a street that is now called Walter Burley Griffin Place . It is the largest cluster of Griffin's smaller buildings that still exist today (now listed ).

On June 29, 1911, he married Marion Lucy Mahony . She had been employed in Wright's architecture office from 1895 to 1909 and was now working with Hermann Von Holst, who had taken on numerous Wright projects after he had unexpectedly traveled to Europe in 1909. Mahony convinced Von Holst to hire Griffin to landscap some of these projects in Decatur . After the marriage, Mahony joined Griffin's company.

Between 1899 and 1914, Griffin designed over 130 plans in Chicago for buildings, zoning codes, and landscapes in the states of Illinois , Iowa , Michigan, and Wisconsin . After he left Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural office in 1906, the relationship subsequently cooled noticeably. After winning the Canberra design contest and the resulting front page headline for the New York Times , Griffin and Wright never spoke to each other. Whenever Griffin was a topic of conversation in later years, Wright downplayed Griffin's merits and disparagingly called him “draftsman”.

Canberra

Griffin's plan for Canberra

In April 1911 the government of Australia announced an international competition for the planning of the new capital Canberra . The Griffins did not find out about the competition until July 1911 during their honeymoon. Griffin worked out the development plan while his wife provided impressive artistic interpretations. On May 23, 1912 , Griffin's plan was selected as the winner from 137 entries received. This success generated increased press attention and brought Griffin professional and public recognition. Later he wrote about it:

I have planned a city that is not like any other in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any government authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city - a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.
( I planned a city unlike any other in the world. I did not plan it as I expected any government in the world would accept it. I planned an ideal city - a city that would match my ideal of the city corresponds to the future. )

In 1913, Griffin was invited to inspect the site. While his wife took over the management of the architectural office, he traveled to Australia in July. While there, Griffin received an offer from the University of Illinois to head the architecture department. But at the same time he negotiated a three-year contract with the government to stay in Australia and oversee the implementation of his plan. Griffin has been named the Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction . In this position he oversaw the detailed planning of the boroughs of North Canberra and South Canberra . In 1914 his wife also moved to Australia. Griffin faced a number of political and bureaucratic obstacles. After the outbreak of World War I , he came under pressure to reduce the scope and size of the project as the government poured funds into the war effort. Various parts of his basic design were omitted (three road axes and a railway line) or changed (moving a market area from North Canberra to South Canberra).

The pace of construction was slower than expected, partly due to lack of funds and partly due to a dispute between Griffin and senior federal bureaucrats. During his stay in Australia, many of Griffin's design ideas were criticized by the press. The fact that an American of all people designed the new capital also caused displeasure among Australian architects and the press. In 1917 a commission of inquiry concluded that Burley's authority had been undermined; the data provided on which his work was based had been inaccurate and in some cases incorrect. Finally, in December 1920, he resigned from the Canberra Project after learning that some of those bureaucrats who had obstructed him had been appointed to the Federal Capital Advisory Committee , set up by Prime Minister Billy Hughes to help the rest of them Monitor the progress of the work. Griffin was offered membership, but Griffin declined. Griffin had designed some buildings for Canberra himself, but none was ever realized. The tomb of General William Throsby Bridges on Mount Pleasant is Griffin's only permanent structure completed in Canberra.

Later career

The Griffins' Chicago office had closed in 1917. However, they were very successful in Melbourne and Sydney , which led the couple to continue living in Australia. From 1913 onwards, parallel to their work on the capital, Canberra, they had designed numerous urban development plans and buildings in Australia, including Newman College at the University of Melbourne . The first significant building after the end of Canberra's engagement was the Capitol Theater in Melbourne, which opened in December 1924. Architectural critic Robin Boyd described the Capitol in 1964 as "the best cinema ever built and ever will be built."

The Knitlock modular construction system designed by Griffin

In 1916/17 Griffin developed and patented an element construction system called "Knitlock". Although originally intended for this, not a single Knitlock building has been constructed in Canberra. Instead, the first buildings of this type were built on the Griffins property in Frankston . Frank Lloyd Wright developed a similar system based on Griffin's design.

In 1919, the Griffins founded the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA) and two years later acquired a 259 hectare property in North Sydney. The aim of the GSDA was to develop an idyllic community in an architectural style that is in harmony with the natural surroundings. As managing director of GSDA, Walter Burley Griffin designed all the buildings in the area until 1935 using his Knitlock system. The inclusion of the original scrubland in the planning was a new concept at the time. Griffin's other projects during this period included the Melbourne suburb of Eaglemont and the cities of Leeton , Griffith and Culburra Beach in New South Wales . During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Griffin designed several waste incineration plants in the greater Sydney area .

During the GSDA activity, the Griffins came into contact with the theosophy of the Adyar Theosophical Society in Sydney in 1926 . They made contact with a number of leading theosophists, Walter published several articles in the theosophical journal The Theosophist , but they did not join the society. The dissolution of the Order of the Star and the resulting discrepancies led to the Griffins becoming increasingly alienated from theosophy and closer to anthroposophy . His wife Marion joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1930, and Walter followed her example in 1931. In 1935, through contacts with anthroposophy, they secured the contract to build the university library in the Indian city ​​of Lucknow . Walter Burley Griffin moved to India and his wife followed suit the following year. Griffin's plans from this period are considered highly original and included additional university buildings, a monument to King George V , residential buildings, palaces, and an administrative and printing center for the Pioneer newspaper . He also designed pavilions for the United Province Exhibition in 1937. During his stay in India, Griffin wrote numerous newspaper articles on architecture, particularly improvements in ventilation.

In February 1937, Griffin fell from scaffolding and tore his gallbladder . A few days later he died of peritonitis after an unsuccessful operation . During Griffin's lifetime, none of the buildings he had planned had been realized in India. His wife oversaw the completion of the Pioneer Center, closed the India office and turned the Australian office over to Griffin's partner Eric Nicholls. She returned to Chicago to write her memoir.

Aftermath

Griffin had been largely disparaged during his time in Australia, but after his death his work was increasingly recognized. When Canberra finally received Griffin's proposed city center lake in 1964, Prime Minister Robert Menzies refused to have the lake named after him; instead it was named Lake Burley Griffin .

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • James Birrell: Walter Burley Griffin. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia 1964.
  • David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim: Buildings of Iowa. Oxford University Press, New York 1993, ISBN 0-19-509378-X .
  • Paul Kruty: Griffin, Walter Burley. In: American National Biography Online . Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Bill MacMahon: The Architecture of East Australia, An architectural history in 432 individual presentations . Edition Axel Menges , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-930698-90-0 .
  • Mati Maldre and Paul Kruty: Walter Burley Griffin in America. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1996, ISBN 0-252-02193-2 .
  • Mason City, Iowa (Ed.): Mason City Iowa. An Architectural Heritage. 1977.
  • Christopher Vernon: Frank Lloyd Wright , Walter Burley Griffin, Jens Jensen and the Jugendstil Garden in America . In: Die Gartenkunst 7 (2/1995), pp. 232–246.
  • Richard Guy Wilson and Sidney K. Robinson: The Prairie School in Iowa. Iowa State University Press, Ames 1977, ISBN 0-8138-0915-0 .

Web links

Commons : Walter Burley Griffin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Griffin Society - Introducing the Griffins
  2. ↑ Connecting Asia and Australia ( Memento from September 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Griffin, Walter Burley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect and landscaper
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Maywood , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1937
Place of death Lucknow , India