Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408:front:0:p410
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 1309780–1312592

series of terraces arranged in the functions of government and representing democracy. It was a synthesis of function and design where the Order of the Site (the natural environment) and the Order of Functions (the needs of the people) are perfectly integrated by specific geometry (Reid 2002). The Capitol was a main feature of the design

In terms of vistas, the Griffin vision was represented in two renderings drawn by Marion Mahony Griffin. In the rendering looking from Mt Ainslie towards the Capitol, the drama of the vista focuses on the Capitol, the building representing the aspirational forces in Australian national life, with the final termination in the mountains beyond. Below the Capitol, the Parliament House and the Government departments are terraced down to the Lake providing a symbol of a transparent democracy in action. The observer is standing at Mt Ainslie, a point representative of the power and influence of nature and the highest point of the vista. Griffin's plan for the ideal city, the philosophical triumvirate of humanity, democracy and nature is iconographed along the land axis which together with the water axis is the ordering geometry of the vista and the city. Griffin envisaged a dense city with a coming together of the population in a Casino (something akin to the recreational city gardens in pre war Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm) and Plaisance descending from the foot of Mt Ainslie. Intersected by a busy commercial street, Constitution Avenue, the Plaisance unfolded to the area designated for cultural activity from which the people could look across the lake (or water axis) to the area of national government that was climaxed by the building symbolic of national achievement and aspiration, the Capitol.

Griffin's 1913 land use plan for the central National area indicates his intentions. Moving from north to south along the land axis, he proposed a park at the northern end of the land axis, public gardens on the north side of the lake, the lake itself (now Lake Burley Griffin), government buildings flanking a central terrace court to the south of the lake, Parliament House on Camp Hill, the Capitol building on Capital Hill flanked by the Governor General's residence to the west and the Prime Minister's residence to the east. The Capitol building was not intended to be the Parliament but rather to be for popular reception and ceremonial activities or for archives or otherwise to commemorate Australian achievements. Griffin's philosophical vision expressed in a remarkable urban planning form has been affected by the realities of Australian political and cultural life as well as by the circumstances and juxtapositions of historic events. Australian planners following Griffin have rearranged the icons to reflect the dominant realities and