1) History of Canberra + The Canberra Competition

Lead Up to the 1911-1912 Canberra Competition

Federation was achieved between the 6 Australian colonies on the 1st of January, 1901. This event had been in the making for around 50 years as the separate colonies began to see the benefits of becoming a unified nation in order to address important issues such as defence and immigration policy.

Long before Australia's official Federation, the idea of what and where the nation's capital city would be had become a matter of much controversy, particularly between the rival cities of Sydney and Melbourne. The eventual outcome of constitutional conferences held in the 1890s was Section 125 of the new Australian Constitution which stated that:

"The seat of government of the Commonwealth shall be determined by the Parliament, and shall be within territory which shall have been granted to or acquired by the Commonwealth, and shall be vested in and belong to the Commonwealth, and shall be in the State of New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney. Such territory shall contain an area not less than one hundred square miles, and such portion thereof as shall consist of Crown lands shall be granted to the Commonwealth without any payment therefor. The Parliament shall sit at Melbourne until it meet at the seat of Government."

Considerations which led these decisions included:

- preference for a cool climate

- must be located away from the coast so as to be safe from naval attack

- access to a port for trade and transport

- a pristine environment, free of industry or urban development

- fresh water supply

- a grand natural landscape which was worthy of the nation's capital

Given these specifications, Alexander Oliver surveyed possible sites for a federal capital in 1900. In 1902 and 1903, members of the federal parliament (pictured above) toured the potential New South Wales sites of Albury, Armidale, Bathurst, Bombala, Dalgety, Delegate, Goulburn, Lake George, Lyndhurst, Orange, Queanbeyan, Tumut, Wagga Wagga and Yass (Canberra). After much debate, the Yass–Canberra area officially became the federal capital site in 1908.


Coincidentally, the etymology of Canberra traces back to local indigenous roots. The word 'Kambera' means 'meeting place' in reference to corroborees held during the seasonal migration of the Ngunnawal people to feast on the Bogong moths that pass through the region each spring.

The Canberra Competition

International competitions for major city plans were not uncommon at the turn of the 20th century. George Sydney Jones first suggested a competition to design the federal capital at the 1901 town planning conference in Melbourne, and, in 1911, Minister of Home Affairs, King O’Malley approved an international design competition. Controversially, he reserved the right to make the final decision on the winning plan to design the federal capital. This dissuaded many architects and planners from entering the competition both domestically and abroad.

In May 1912, Walter Burley Griffin won the competition to design Australia’s capital city. Although submitted in Walter’s name, the plan was formulated in collaboration with Marion Mahony Griffin. They won the competition based on as series of beautifully rendered 152 x 76cm panels containing survey plans, perspectives and sections of the ideal, garden city which was to be aligned and integrated with unique natural landscape of the site. 

While other competitors had responded to the site as a blank page, distorting it to conform to various aesthetic principles, the Griffins were sensitive to the site’s natural features.

The Griffins delineated a land axis, aligned with the summits of four local mountains. It went from Mount Ainslie to Mount Bimberi in the Brindabellas, passing through Camp Hill and Kurrajong. Crossing this at right angles was a water axis along the river, which in the plan became a chain of ornamental basins. By integrating the site’s topography with their design, the Griffins presented the site itself as a symbol ‘of a democratic national identity’ (Vernon, 2002).

Complementing their landscape design was an architectural scheme for the city. Most remarkable was their proposal for a huge Capitol building, atop the inner city’s highest hill (Kurrajong, now known as Capital Hill). A ceremonial building, the Capitol would commemorate the achievements of the Australian people. Instead of the ‘inevitable dome’, the building would be capped by a stepped pinnacle or ziggurat. For Walter Burley Griffin, this form expressed ‘the last word of all the longest lived civilisations’ (Vernon, 2002).

Although Burley Griffin is commonly cited as a proponent of the 'Prairie Modernist' movement, he described himself as "what may be termed as a naturalist in architecture. I do not believe in any school of architecture. I believe in architecture that is the logical outgrowth of the environment in which the building in mind is to be located" (From The New York Times, Sunday, June 2, 1912) 


Runners Up


Runners-up entries to the competition included those of Alfred Agache and Eliel Saarinen.


Agache's plan also employed beautiful presentation techniques in order to sway the judges, as seen in his survey plan below. His scheme, (much like Griffin's), identifies Kurajong hill as the site for the main parliament building from which axes run and 45 degrees over the Molonglo river to frame a panoramic view between the other mountainous landscape features.

Saarinen's monumental massing of architecture around formal water basins was grand. However, some critics regarded it as ‘oppressively formal’ as it would have required considerable cut and fill to eliminate hills.