>Hey Stevo - wanna tell him what Canberra is really like?!
>AndrewF
>
>
Canberra was designed by one of my favorite US Prairie School architects,
Walter Burley Griffin and his architect wife, Marion Mahony Griffin. Some of
the work they did here in the US is just stunning. I love it.
At the time that Griffin won the competition for the capital of Australia,
due in large part to the outstanding renderings by his wife, the Prairie
School was in decline here in the US. Chicago, the birthplace of the Prairie
School, in the year 1900 was still considered "the west" and a certain level
of innovation was allowed and accepted by the public. The School was radical
for its day, and derided by the east coast traditionalists. The School was
the first to use the open floorplan, where the foyer, living room, dinning
room, and sometimes the kitchen were joined, and divided only by short half
walls or just builtin furniture. This concept is used to this day in all new
houses here in the US. Previously, all rooms were divided by walls and doors.
The School destroyed the boxes and opened the interior space.
The rise of women's influence in home design decisions, due to the women's
suffrage movement, was mostly responsible for killing off the school. By
around 1915, the vast majority of wives in the midwest were under the
influence of the style magazines from the east coast, which promoted the
Colonial style as being the most respectable and accepted. FL Wright used to
say that when a couple came in to his office, if the man was in charge, he
was certain to get the job, if the woman was in charge, then he knew he
wouldn't get it. There were some homes built that were Prairie School on the
outside but Colonial on the inside to satisfy both parties.
The Prairie School was the first indigenous architectural style in the US and
was the forerunner of the Modernist movement. The Colonial style was adapted
from Classical Greek and Roman architecture, and was introduced by Thomas
Jefferson. It was entirely appropriate that the first Democracy in almost
2,000 years would adopt architecture from the previous Democracy, the ancient
Greeks, and that was the basis for Jefferson using it. But, by now the basis
for the Classical style is completely lost and just rote immitation is what
is produced now. For example, the columns common to this style were
originally supposed to be stylized tree trunks, with a root flare at the
bottom and branches at the top.
Anyway, I hope I have not taken up too much bandwidth here.....
--
Be Seeing You.
Dirk Wright
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