Preparing the entry

Canberra was one of the first designs produced after the Griffins’ marriage. It was a busy time, and producing the plans was a long, involved process. They almost failed to meet the deadline.

The Griffins’ partnership

Marion Lucy Mahony worked in Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural studio in suburban Chicago from 1895. Walter Burley Griffin joined it in 1901. By this time, Chicago had emerged as the centre of a new architectural movement. Its innovation was partly in the presentational techniques and, in this regard, Marion Mahony played a leading role (Vernon, 2002).

After five years with Wright, Walter Burley Griffin left to establish his own practice. Then in 1909, Hermann von Holst took over Wright’s practice and opened a new office in Steinway Hall, where many of Chicago’s progressive architects were based. Walter also had an office in the building. Walter and Marion began to collaborate again and she joined Walter’s practice the next year.

Marion thought that Walter’s work was languishing, ‘lying hidden away known only to immediate clients’. So she and Walter ‘put their heads together’ and devised an alternative ‘method of presentation’ (cited in Vernon, 2002).

Their personal relationship also developed. Communing with nature on canoe trips in the Chicago area, they developed a strong mutual commitment to conservation and to each other. They married on 29 June 1911.

Late news

Although the competition to design the capital of Australia had been announced in April 1911, word did not reach Chicago until July when the Griffins were still on their honeymoon. The opportunity to design a completely new city for a new democratic nation was too good to be true and the competition materials were sought.

A call to action

The Griffins’ office was busy with regular work and the competition work had still not begun by Novemeber 1911. With growing frustration, Marion admonished Walter:

For the love of Mike, when are you going to get started on those Capital plans? How much time do you think there is left anyway? Do you realise that it takes a solid month to get [the drawings] over there after they have started their way? That leaves exactly nine weeks now to turn them out in. Perhaps you can design a city in two days but the drawings take time and that falls on me ... What’s the use of thinking about a thing like this for ten years if when the time comes you don’t get it done in time! Mark my words and I’m not joking either, either you get busy on that this very day, this very minute (with rising tones) or I’ll not touch a pencil to the darn things. (cited in Vernon, 2002: 13)

With this catalyst, the work began.

Devising the plan

From that point on, Walter and Marion worked feverishly on the project. As well as their city office, they took over a large room in Walter’s parents’ home as a second studio. As they developed details of the design, drawings were positioned on the studio walls to simulate the actual site conditions. However, no draft diagrams or records of their ‘collaborative dialogue’ survive; the Griffins’ submission is known ‘almost exclusively from the final drawings’ (Vernon, 2002).

Marion at work

Marion was responsible for the production of the final drawings. Architect Roy Lippincott, a member of the drafting team assisting, recalled her precise, inventive technique (Vernon, 2002):

• The first drawings were in ink on linen tracing cloth, with her quill pen barely skimming the fabric’s surface.
• The drawings were then lithographed on window shade Holland (cloth), and rendered with watercolour and photograph dyes.
• They were next lithographed on satin, dipped in thin blue size (a sealant), and stretched smooth on a board.
• After drying, the rendering was done with dyes.
• Once stripped from the board, and lightly dusted with a soft cloth, enough of the size was removed to reveal the satin surface.

The final drawings were completed in the Griffins’ Steinway Hall office in the last weeks of 1911. The resulting portfolio of drawings represented ‘an entire city set in a continuous, wider landscape’ (Vernon, 2002).

A dramatic climax

Soon came the dramatic dispatch of the drawings, remembered later by Marion: ‘toward midnight of a bitterly cold winter night, the box of drawings, too long to go in a taxi, was rushed with doors open and men without their coats to the last train that could meet the last boat for Australia’ (cited in Vernon, 2002).

Walter Burley Griffin

Marion Mahony Griffin

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