Story  by Warrigal Mirriyuula

A few years ago I attended an architecture conference at UNSW. It was being held in “The Scientia Building”, a striking building from Richard Francis-Jones that manages to appear much bigger than it is in both concrete and abstract ways.

But that’s not what I want to talk about, as interesting as that building is and the conference was.

What I want to tug on your coat about is some reflections on some comments made at that conference by James Weirick. The venerable James is a world authority on Walter Burley-Griffin and his remarkable wife Marion Mahony

He said that Canberra was a failed vision if WBG’s original plan was the benchmark. He regretted this, saying that Canberra had “become a whited sepulchre”, that it was now “a place where ideas came to die”.  A resonating metaphor for fans of Conrad’s “The Heart Of Darkness” and a cynical analysis certainly, but they were the Howard years after all.

Weirick’s comment was in the context of a critique of the then current level of “planning” in Canberra and what he suggested was a deleterious impact on the quality of the built environment in our nation’s capital. The comment hardly raised an eyebrow. Indeed I’d say that most there that day probably agreed. But then you’ll always get takers when you offer a chance for one architect to critique the work of another.

So if no less august a body than the membership of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects is of the consensus that Canberra is a failed attempt at expressing nationhood then who am I to say they are wrong.

Then, a few months ago, the actor Guy Pearce weighed in to the debate on Craig Ferguson’s Late Show, suggesting that there was “a lot wrong with Canberra.” Well of course he was pilloried by the opinionati back home, and the local blog responses soon turned up to the usual “hysterical PLUS” setting with Pearce being slagged off left, right and centre. It wasn’t long before his freely offered opinion was being described as, (ssshiivverr), unAustralian. Pearce spent several days apologising.

And in that last I find something deeply disturbing.

Why shouldn’t Pearce say what’s on his mind with respect to our nation’s capital?

Well it may be all of a piece with the other major problem we have in Canberra. The place is swarming with, absolutely pullulating with politicians and their attendent creatures. They infest the restaurants, besmirch the footpaths and stuff the hotels, not to mention worrying the sex workers something fierce. And to what end? Good government? (Pshaw!!!)

It seems that at the same time as our ability to critique the actions and policies of the political caste and their unholy coven of sectionally interested campaign contributors, media advisers, spin doctors and lobbyists is being comprehensively compromised by the actions of human dross like Murdoch, and even our much vaunted national broadcaster has decided, for reasons never actually placed in the public domain, that partisan stupidity sells better than considered and probative comment; we are being asked to constrain our personal opinions as to whether or not Canberra is actually a city of any note at all.

Is it unAustralian to have an opinion that isn’t set in stone by one or some combination of media proprietors? If we don’t gulp down the constantly regurgitated cant of the political parties, are we necessarily plotting the downfall of Australia? What is wrong with having a negative opinion towards the place where those elected to the great privilege of representing their electorates go to avoid any responsibility to those constituents? Why is it that once in Canberra, policy and promises can be massaged almost into non-existence by the weasel speaking words of the “inner ring”?

Canberra bashing has been a national sport since the day they announced the willow choked, swampy valley of the Molongolo would one day be a bright and shining beacon of antipodean democracy, let alone a showcase of the new Australian vernacular architecture. In it’s more than 100 years of existence Canberra has managed to miss both those trains, again and again and again.

So here’s another piece of Canberra bashing, proudly presented in the “unAustralian” tone of the deeply disappointed and disillusioned.

The place is little more than a dull dormitory for public servants and political hacks. Since WBG’s departure the built environment of our national capital has become a hotch potch of bad planning, incompetent competition winners and half arsed attempts at “saying something” architecturally. Which is not to say that that there aren’t gems to be found. They’re just far fewer and farther between that the Canberra Tourist Bureau would have you believe.

Seriously, if it weren’t for both Parliament Houses, The National Gallery and Library, and the exciting and sometimes bizarre National Museum, which are for the most part worthy examples of the architecture of their time, you wouldn’t be caught dead in the place. I also particularly like the Carillon, and I suppose if I’m honest, there are other examples of interesting architecture dotted here and there, but few of them rise to the level of type specimens for an Australian vernacular architecture.

Why did the promise of such gems as the 1950’s Academy of Science fail to materialise? This Chesley Bonestell-esque futurist dream was the first building anywhere I ever noticed for itself. At that time, if I thought about it at all, I would have seen an exciting and innovative future for both Canberra and Australia.

So what’s up with the built environment in Canberra?

As an example of the twist Canberra is in architecturally I offer the brouhaha over the demolition of a building in Belconnen. You’d have thought someone had suggested tearing down St Pauls Cathedral.

Instead of letting the ugly decaying pile be pulled down, the cognoscenti, including the RAIA it has to be said, got all hot under the collar over plans to deconstruct the Cameron Offices. A 1970’s study in brutalist beauty, if such expression isn’t actually an oxymoron.

In its last days before the ball and chain, when hysteria was the common modality on both sides of the argument, the building had come through time to look like nothing so much as one of those commercial shop/factory unit developments in say Mascot. The sort of place you might turn up at to buy and fit a car music system, or buy some cane furniture.

It may have been considered ground breaking when John Andrews designed the place nearly forty years ago, indeed several commentators said so at the time; but riddled with concrete cancer and described by those that had to work there as “cold and unfriendly”, it was just like a sepulchre; a concrete grey, rust stained sepulchre; and housing, as it did, the offices of The Prime Minister and Cabinet it richly earned my own nomination as one of the many whited sepulchres that dot the Canberra landscape.

These buildings represent the graves of good architecture. Strangled in the planning process and boxed by constant political interference, these dead monuments to committee based planning dot the capital landscape like great beached whales, putrefying in the hot Australian sun. Many are post Corbusier brutalist exercises in concrete display but lack Corbusier’s design finesse.

The education sector has had to bear a disproportionate amount of this stuff. Look at the Canberra School of Music, which seems somehow to entirely dispel the notion of harmony, unless Daryl Jackson and Evan Walker’s design was meant to look like an intimidating industrial laundry.

The University of Canberra’s student accom is much the same. John Andrews again managed to make “home” look like an industrial pig farm.

Sorry John; I loved it then, and I still find it fascinating, but these days I just can’t see humans living there.

Brutalism is going through a reassessment at the moment. Many still like it, some even have a kind of nostalgia for these buildings, and I don’t want to suggest that the architects I’ve named aren’t up to snuff. This is all just my opinion, and everyone’s got one of those.

But there may be change in the wind. At last there may be some quality in the built environment of the educational sector in Canberra.

With the opening of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU, we see a striking and adventurous design by Lyons architects that somehow survived the planning process.

However, lest you think this “spring” heralds better days ahead for building in Canberra, I offer the cautionary tale of another building that appeared to have gotten over the planning hurdles only to stagger after construction began. ASIO’s new headquarters, currently being built down by Lake Burley-Griffin, is another “Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp” design. (Richard Francis-Jones really packs an awful lot of design punch for a little bloke!)

There’s been nothing but trouble since they turned the first sod. If it’s not budget problems it’s trespassing teenagers seriously injuring themselves “site-seeing”, or glass falling off the facade endangering workers, or perhaps more embarrassing for Richard and his associates, Romaldo Giurgola, formerly part of the practice that became Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp, has come out strongly against his former partners and the design of the building citing no less an authority than Burley-Griffin himself. Like I said, you’ll always get takers for one architect to critique another.

“Canberra residents and the Burley Griffin society believe the building will be a, “barbed wire city in the heart of Canberra”. ACT senator Gary Humphries is also against the design: “I just can’t see that this is going to be compatible with the concept of what was designed by Burley Griffin and which has recently been reinforced with the Griffith Legacy concept which has been affirmed by the National Capital Authority.”

On his website , Humphries calls for a two storey reduction as the building is over-sized for its context. “I am deeply concerned that the size of the building will interrupt the vista from the War Memorial through to the Parliamentary Triangle… It would create a wall-like effect along Constitution Avenue, separating the area to its north from the lake precinct.”

The honourable Senator from the ACT may have a point but you’d think things like overall height would have been worked out already, but then this is Canberra and you never have to go far to find a shitfight.

So I guess while the powers that be continue to wrangle, we can all continue our love/hate relationship with Canberra, its politicians and its built environment for some time to come. I wonder what James Weirick thinks of this latest design brouhaha. Perhaps he can’t say for fear that ASIO might come knocking.

Keywords: Architecture, Walter Burley-Griffin, Scientia Building, Richard Francis-Jones, James Weirick, John Andrews, Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness, Whited Sepulchre, The Cameron Offices, Australian Academy of Science, ASIO Headquarters, Curtin School Of Medical Research, Lyons Architects.