Once upon a time, Canberra was the home of some fine geometry. The City had a pretty good start, with the Griffin’s putting in place some serious groundwork with the radial geometry and the land and water axes of the city. Architects such as Roy Grounds, Sydney Ancher, John Andrews embraced these conditions and produced buildings of lasting significance, like the Shine Dome and the Cameron Offices.
All of the orthographic transformations; repetition, rotation, symmetry, and so on, were put to good use and Canberra acted as a kind of playground for the exploration of modernist principles. Somewhere along the way, however, Canberra got tired of all this geometry and is now seemingly doing its best to replicate the typology of suburban industrial parks within the City centre. (Aside from the fine work undertaken by the NCA of course to reinstate the intentions of the Griffin Plan and one building on Northbourne Ave that is under construction as we speak…)
Following are some images of places discovered while floating around in Google Earth and represent a snapshot of some of the best examples of this kind of work in Canberra - at least those that I could find. I may have missed a few and I confess that I don’t know what some of the ones that I found are, so if you know, then feel free to let us know in the comments.
Benjamin Offices - McConnel Smith and Johnson
Shine Dome - Roy Grounds
Northbourne Housing Group - Sydney Ancher
Capital Hill
The inner circle is City Hill, the outer hexagonal road is London Circuit. At 2 o’clock on London Circuit there are opposing square buildings with central court spaces. These are the Civic Offices -Yuncken Freeman, 1961. (Thanks Martin)
Arthur Circuit
The Coombs Building at ANU (Thanks Michael)
Callam Offices in Woden - John Andrews
Cameron Offices (now partially demolished) - John Andrews
Canberra University student housing - John Andrews
Trade Union Offices - Harry Seidler
Related posts:
Great post! A few thoughts:
It’s Parliament House on Capital Hill.
The inner circle is City Hill, the outer hexagonal road is London Circuit. At 2 o’clock on London Circuit there are opposing square buildings with central court spaces. These are the Civic Offices (Yuncken Freeman, 1961).
The outer circular road is Arthur Circle, the inner one Tasmania Circle. Collins Park is in the centre.
The three linked hexagonal buildings I need to think about.
Below that is Callam Offices in Woden, John Andrews (1980).
Seidler’s Trade Group or Barton Offices, about to be gutted and turned into the new AFP HQ.
Not sure about the bottom one.
The three linked hexagonal buildings are the Coombs Building at the Australian National University, built in the sixtes and seventies. It houses the Research School of Social Sciences.
Martin, Michael - thanks guys.
I have updated the text with your info.
Great stuff. I posted a landscape-scale pattern a while ago, the centre-pivot irrigated fields:
http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2007/04/bestlaid_plans_.html