Reading Response 3: The Making of Parliament House (part 1)

Reading Response 3:
The Making of Parliament House (Haig Beck)

Beck opens with the statement that: “Parliament House, is the seat of the Federal parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia”. He then goes on to briefly flag some of the issues leading up to federation, the development and location of the National Capital and how the government operated in a ‘provisional’ building from 1927 to 1988 when the ‘new’/current Parliament house was opened in the bicentennial year.

Parliament House is located strategically within a Federal Capital designed specifically for its purpose by architect Walter Burly Griffin. His design, selected out of 137 others from around the world, conceived of a garden city within “the natural topography, aligning the principal boulevards on distant vistas and gathering the city’s centre around the shores of an artificial lake”. The struggle to actually realize Griffin’s vision plays out over nearly 50 years from 1913 reflects to some degree the birth, and struggle to grow to acceptable maturity of the Australian Nation itself. Both these developments are played out through 2 World Wars, the Great Depression, evolution of global travel and the development communication technology.

G Sydney Jones Provisional Parliament House reflects the look of many of our state buildings of the day in form and function. Its contribution is that it gave us some credibility whilst we took the time to forge our independent national identity and psyche both internally and globally.

The site of the new building on Capital Hill was not where Griffin conceived of it but higher on the hill.  Griffin had intended to have the hill as a public park and meeting place, symbolically locating the people above the parliament. Haig points out that this gesture, though, is cleverly retained in the new building.

The fact that we understood our identity and were quite confident with “who we are” underpinned the fact that the final design (by Mitchell/Giurgola and Thorp, and established American architectural practice) was unanimously chosen by the jury out of 329 entries from 28 countries.

The late 70’s and early 80’s allowed for technologies to be used, and also developed, so that the emerging ‘fast-tracking’ management procedure could be used to create something beautiful not just utilitarian. The method had proven itself in large scale civil engineering projects and commercial developments aesthetics were generally not a major consideration. Now the stage was set for a monumental billion dollar project that would certainly be utilitarian in its function but also an artistic expression of the Nation and that despite its scale had to be delivered on time. The process usually relied on mass production of components and commercial finishes with industrial connotations which were not suitable for the Parliament House.

They used an ancient Roman technique and building practice of facade and veneer to fast-track something that would be both a massive engineering structure but also a work of art, housing works of art along with our government and the executive. Haig points out the aspect of the 2 teams required to manage this; one a construction group responsible for the structural carcase and the second a battery of skilled artisans applying fine architectural finishes. This approach reduced construction time with the cladding being able to be built off-site in facilities designed to do so whilst the structure as going up and then brought to the site and applied. Global communication technology allowed these claddings to be designed accurately, effectively and in a timely manner. This would not have been possible earlier in the century. Parliament House was timely and of it’s time...