Australian Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows photographs of Walter Burley Griffin, his home and his architectural drawings, accompanied by a voice-over describing his family background, his involvement in the Chicago architectural scene and his design philosophies. It also shows photographs of the men who were key influences on him, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Donald Johnson, who was at the time of filming a senior lecturer at Adelaide’s Flinders University, contrasts the work of Wright and Griffin, with photographs of drawings and actual buildings illustrating this contrast. Johnson also notes the significance of Griffin’s success in being chosen to design Canberra.

Educational value points

• The clip provides background information and a wide range of visual resource material on a world-famous architect, American Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937). After winning the 1912 Federal Capital Design Competition, which was held to choose a design for Canberra, Griffin moved to Australia, staying on after initial work on Canberra was complete to design the towns of Griffith and Leeton and a number of buildings, subdivisions and landscapes. He lived in Australia from 1913 to 1935, and died in India in 1937.

• Making a documentary about a historical figure of whom little media footage is available poses challenges for the filmmaker. This clip illustrates a range of techniques to deal with some of the challenges, including having an actor read from Griffin’s writings, interviews with relevant experts and using stills of photographs and drawings. The camera zooms in or out of the stills, guiding the viewer’s eye, with the extent and pace of this movement enhancing interest and varying the mood between more static and more dynamic.

• The architectural drawings and photographs paired with the voice-over serve a useful purpose in the clip, giving examples of Griffin’s special ability to infuse architecture with a sense of place and allowing viewers to appreciate distinctive features of Griffin’s style, such as his use of three-dimensional geometric shapes and heavy pylons or pillars, and the way he situated his built forms within their landscapes.

• The clip introduces important influences on Griffin and discusses Griffin’s place as an architect in relation to his contemporaries. While Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) is mentioned only briefly, his concept of architectural form following function became a key principle of 20th-century architecture and informed Griffin’s work. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) is discussed more fully. He employed Griffin in Chicago and the two men influenced each other’s work, although Wright is said to have referred to Griffin as 'a draftsman’. Donald Johnson contrasts the work of Wright and Griffin using visuals to support his comments, with photographs of the men and their work bringing the documentary to life.

• Griffin won the competition to design Canberra with a stunningly rendered set of plans. Sensitivity to the site’s natural features was a key component of the design. However, the clip suggests that Griffin was considered a risky choice as he had previously only designed houses and landscapes. Indeed, disagreements and controversies led to various amendments being made to his original plan.

• The clip offers insights into modernism in architecture and Griffin’s role in 20th-century design. The evolution in Chicago of an architecture fluent in 'the democratic language of everyday life’, and supposedly unlike anything that had gone before, had an enormous influence on the development of modernism. The drawings included here demonstrate, however, that Griffin was clearly also influenced by classical forms, illustrating the difficulties of creating something entirely new in any area of art, especially when judged from the perspective of hindsight.