Walter Burley Griffin: A Re-View

About the exhibition
This exhibition showcased the Australian work of American-born architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937) and his collaborator and wife Marion Mahony Griffin (1871–1961).

In 1912, Griffin won the international competition to design the plan for Canberra and, a year later, arrived in Australia with Mahony Griffin—an accomplished architect in her own right and Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated draughtsperson. Although Griffin resigned from the Canberra project in 1920, both he and Mahony Griffin left a significant architectural and planning legacy in Australia, with Griffin maintaining offices in Melbourne (1914–1937?) and Sydney (1915–35).

The exhibition featured original drawings, plans, furniture, models, building fragments and photographs, including images of Griffin’s projects by Max Dupain and Wolfgang Sievers. Six of Mahony Griffin’s drawings of American houses designed by Griffin for Northwestern University in Chicago were one of the exhibition’s highlights. The exhibition also included a contemporary component: sixteen Melbourne architects were invited to respond to the design of Pholiota—the Griffins’ own house in Heidelberg, built in 1919.

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^{Top image: Unknown artist, drawing of Newman College, University of Melbourne, 1915, ink on drawing cloth. Courtesy of Burnham Library, Chicago, Institute Van Lanten
Bottom image: John Kauffman, Exterior view of Newman College, Melbourne 1918, carbon print of photograph. Collection of Newman College, Melbourne}