Blaze e-catalogue - Catalog - Page 60
Marion
Mahony
Griffin
1871-1961
Architect
Chicago-born Marion Mahony Griffin played
an instrumental role in designing Griffith and
Leeton in south western NSW.
Marion Mahony was the second woman to obtain
an architecture degree from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s
first employee (1895). In 1911, she married
architect Walter Burley Griffin, beginning
a 25 year partnership ‘nurtured by different
but complementary personal, intellectual and
creative strengths, and shared spiritual beliefs’.
“She has accomplished much
of merit without subscribing
to the doctrines of ‘Tradition’.”
Building, Vol. 14, No. 82, 12 June 1914, p. 180
In 1911, the Griffins collaborated to design
Australia’s new federal capital, Canberra. At the
same time, the NSW Government was advancing
an ambitious scheme to dam the Murrumbidgee
River for irrigation to transform the state’s dry
interior into its agricultural heart. New towns
supported by large-scale infrastructure would
be needed to service the scheme. Impressed
by the Griffin-designed Canberra, NSW
Commissioner for Water Conservation and
Irrigation, Leslie Wade commissioned the Griffins
to prepare two urban designs, one for Leeton,
and the other for Griffith. But the upheaval
caused by the WWI and Commissioner Wade’s
death in 1915, meant that the Griffin-designed
towns never fully materialised.
Above left
Marion Mahony Griffin
Portrait of Marion Mahony Griffin, seated (detail)
Stella Miles Franklin, c.1915, ML, PXD 250/3, No. 42
architecture & planning
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