London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

The most beautiful city never built

Ernest Gimson’s Canberra

Whenever I’m in in Westminster Cathedral, I feel obliged to nip in to and say a prayer in the chapel dedicated to St Andrew. The apostle is my patron many times over: in addition to being my name-saint, he is the patron of the university, the town, and the country in which I spent four luxurious years. His is one of the most finely decorated chapels in the cathedral, and boasts a beautiful mosaic depiction of the ‘Auld Grey Toun’ above the arms of the donor, the 4th Marquess of Bute. (His father, the eccentric 3rd Marquess, had been Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews.)

Stumbling upon the genial Cathedral Historian, Patrick Rogers, the other day, he shared with me that the stalls and kneelers in St Andrew’s Chapel are widely considered the finest works of arts-and-crafts furniture design in all of Great Britain. They are the creation of a man I had never heard of: the craftsman, designer, and architect Ernest Gimson.

An unfamiliar name is always a potential new avenue of knowledge down which to saunter, and so it proved with Ernest Gimson. His talent at furniture is undoubted but, given my obsession with architecture, it was instead that field of his expertise which particularly drew me in. It was then that I discovered his submission for the 1911-1912 Australian Federal Capital Competition.

The British colonies in Australia federated in 1901, and the dispute between Sydney and Melbourne as to which would be the capital of the youthful nation was settled by agreeing to build a new planned city within New South Wales (the state Sydney is in) but not more than 200 miles from Melbourne.

Ten years later, an international competition was announced to determine the design for this new capital being created ex nihilo on the banks of the Molonglo river, which was given the name of Canberra.

Of the 137 entries received, many of them were very handsome, but some of them were frankly awful. Rather than have a team of architects, artists, or urbanists choose the winning design, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr King O’Malley, was the sole decision-maker.

He eventually chose the plan submitted by the Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin, awarding a second prize to Eliel Saarinen of Finland, with third prize going to Alfred Agache of Paris.

The design I would have chosen, however, was Ernest Gimson’s.

Gimson designed a compact capital city of 25,000 inhabitants that would be able to support itself based on neighbouring farms and small-scale industry.

The city is entirely concentrated along the south bank of an artificial lake and centred on a wooded park containing Kurrajong Hill and Camp Hill, with the streets of the city radiating down from there toward the lakeside.

Kurrajong Hill, with its dominating position over the city, was selected for the Houses of Parliament, with eight departmental buildings surrounding it on a lower terrace.

Official residences for the Governor-General and Prime Minister are located nearby, each with six acres of private grounds.

The State Hall is located atop the adjacent, slightly lower, Camp Hill, with the Printing Office and Mint located at either side, where the park ends.

North-west of Kurrajong is the City Hall, flanked by the Courts of Justice, with its main entrance facing towards the central park.

On a small hill nearby is the University, its double-domed central block surrounded again by ancillary buildings on a lower terrace. Playing fields are allotted nearby.

The market is located on the east side “with a covered arcade for the stalls enclosing an open square”, alongside a market house and technical colleges.

The Cathedral rises from the center of the city proper and forms an axis with the State Hall on Camp Hill and the Houses of Parliament atop Kurrajong.

At the near-midpoint of the street connecting the Cathedral to the State Hall, a public square is flanked by a National Art Gallery and Library. Around the Cathedral itself are the National Theatre and the General Post Office.

A stadium is located on the north side of the lake, connected to the city by a bridge, and further provision is made for siting barracks, gas works, a power station, cattle market, and other necessities.

Buildings would chiefly be faced in a light-coloured local stone which gives the plan, deeply influenced by tradition, both a brightness and a more vernacular feel.

To discuss the design of the buildings is tricky: this proposal is an initial plan and, had it been selected, the architect would have had more time to then further refine what he was proposing.

The Houses of Parliament, with their eccentric X-footprint, are a curious conglomeration and not quite right. There seem to be a surfeit of towers that look too similar to one other.

But the Cathedral — my favourite part of Gimson’s plan — is a magnificent creation with an assertive central crossing tower that doubtless would become the visual focus of the city.

The embankment, with its long, generous, 20-foot-deep arcade providing “sheltered walk in hot and wet weather”, is both picturesque and useful.

“While screening in some measure the near part of the lake from the ground floor windows of the houses opposite,” the arcade, Gimson notes, “would enhance rather than diminish, the interest of the wider views.”

Indeed, it provides a useful transition point from lakeside to the rise of the buildings.

The architect’s layout of streets, public spaces, and important buildings, meanwhile, shows the influence of the aesthetic principles of the Austrian urbanist Camillo Sitte, now unjustly neglected since being contemptuously derided by Le Corbusier and other leading modernists.

Gimson’s Canberra is an unpretentious city: its lack of grandeur is what most likely secured its rejection by the fathers of the young and vigorous nation, who were keen to impress. Burley Griffin provided them with a plan redolent of modernity and progress, but marred by fading modishness.

The Gimson plan would have provided Australia a beautiful modern capital city with a design deeply rooted in tradition, and with appropriate consideration of locality and climate. One can imagine that, as the course of history continued, ‘Old Canberra’ would have formed a handsome and much-loved heart of an ever-growing city.

The humane, natural traditionalism of Gimson’s Canberra would have made it much more popular with ordinary people than the sprawling, overly spacious modern city that Canberra is today. Still, it provides a model that urbanists of the future should be mindful of and take inspiration from.

Published at 10:00 pm on Sunday 10 February 2013. Categories: Architecture Australia Tags: , , , .
Comments

This is great!
I didn’t know this marvelous project, and it is a pity that it was refused by the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr King O’Malley … today Camberra and its surrounding would have been much better

ettore maria mazzola 17 Feb 2013 7:56 am

Pity it wasn’t built, I think it looks nice. I wonder if it can give inspiration for architects designing new developments.

Valeria Kondratiev 25 Feb 2013 7:53 pm

This is a timely article given that Canberra is fast approaching it’s Centenary Day (Tuesday 12 March). Rest assured that even if the design had been selected it would never have been built. The winning design (Burley Griffin’s) is hardly recognisable in modern Canberra which despite King O’Malley and others is a remarkably beautiful city!

Vicki Dunne

Vicki Dunne 28 Feb 2013 1:40 am

An auspicious commenter on your site Mr Cusack – if that is the real Vicki Dunne. Ms Dunne is the Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly and a member of the Liberal Party.

Hughie 28 Mar 2013 9:27 pm

Canberra, or Brasilia if you wish, is quite beautiful despite itself. That’s because of the attention first given towards its best asset: the natural environment; it feels like no other Australian city. Essentially, it’s like you’re in the Australian Bush, which is rather unique and attractive in its own right.

But all those roads that feed out into concentric circles and roundabouts!

However, it cannot be denied that if the City was meant to be beautiful O’Malley gets an F.

What a rascal!

Also, this is, scandalously, the very first images I have seen of Gimson’s submission. Andrew, I feel like crying. But these are tears of joy, unlike those I wept when I first witnessed the travesty known as the Australian National Museum.

What a horror that leaky ‘building’ is!

John George Archer 7 May 2013 2:31 pm

You can find out more about Ernest Gimson on the website
http://gimson.leicester.gov.uk and you can see some of his wonderful designs at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum when it reopens on 5 October 2013

Mary Greensted 21 Aug 2013 10:56 am

Andrew, thank you for a notable addition to Australian architectural history; but you might correct a slight error. Section 125 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides:

“The seat of Government of the Commonwealth shall be determined by the Parliament… and shall be in the State of New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney…”

Canberra is (approximately) 150 miles from Sydney and 300 miles from Melbourne.

Alan Dungey 16 Oct 2014 9:06 am

No argument that Canberra would have been better with the Gimson plan, but then it would have been better with the Burley Griffin plan as well–which was never followed or built.

Cormac Flynn 3 Jun 2017 10:10 pm

Thank you for another interesting article I have belatedly come across.Mr.Gimson’s plan for Canberra is appealing and attractive on paper but I feel that a great part of his street lay-out is very confusing and unnecessarily complicated – one would have needed a map and compass or a GPS navigation system to find one’s way around some parts of his planned city!

Charles Press 6 May 2019 3:15 pm

While beautiful I can see why O’Malley would not have liked this design right off, as he was very eccentric in his views and would not have wanted such a huge cathedral looming over his city of the people XD

Chris Finley 31 Aug 2019 6:20 am
Leave a comment

NAME (required)

EMAIL (required)

WEBSITE (not required)

COMMENT

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)