| Historical notes: | Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937)
Walter Burley Griffin was born near Chicago and trained at Nathan Ricker's School of Architecture at the University of Illinios, graduating in 1899. From 1901-1906, he worked as an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright at Oak Park. Griffin started his own practice in 1906 and within a few years established his reputation as an architect of the Prairie School. In 1911, Griffin married Marion Mahony, who had graduated in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as Wright's head designer (Jahn, 1997, p. 221).
Inspired by the designs by Frederick Law Olmsted (often called the founder of American landscape architecture) of New York's Central Park and his 'green necklace' of parks in Boston, landscape design was the career Walter Burley Griffin would have pursued had the opportunity offered. He had approached Chicago landscape gardener Ossian Cole Simonds for career advice before entering the University of Illinois in 1895. Apparently unsatisfied with the lack of relevant curriculum, Simonds urged him to pursue architecture and study landscape gardening on his own, as he himself had done. Griffin took what classes he could and, like Simonds and landscape gardener Jens Jensen, shared an approach to landscape design through architecture, an interest in civic design, urbanism and planning.
In 1902 there were only six 'landscape gardeners' (and no landscape architects) listed in the Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago (Chicago Directory, Chicago, 1902 pp 24, 35, 47). In 1912 only two landscape architects and 13 landscape gardeners were listed (ibid, 1912, pp.1552 & 1693).
Griffin's practice as a landscape architect was first featured in a public text in Wilhelm Miller's 'The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening' (1915), which included Griffin as an exponent (along with Jensen, Simonds and architect Frank Lloyd Wright) of his proposed American regional 'Prairie' style. Simonds, Griffin and Miller had all attended the first national meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1913 in Chicago.
By 1914 Griffin and his architect wife Marion Mahony had moved to Australia after winning the 1912 international design competition for the Federal Capital, Canberra with a scheme based on its topography, a distinctly non-prairie valley landscape of undulating hills. (Stuart Read, in http://www.griffinsociety.org.au/lives and works/landscape_architecture cited 21 November 2008). This was a project they had worked on together (Jahn, 1997, p.221).
By 1919, there were problems with the Canberra project and Griffin resigned his position as Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction. He then formed the Greater Sydney Development Association to purchase 263 hectares in Middle Harbour, which became known as Castlecrag. He devoted the next fifteen years to developing and promoting the area, while maintaining an architectural practice (Jahn, 1997, p. 221)
Griffin believed dwellings should play a subordinate role in the scheme of nature. His houses were small and intimate. He aimed toward the most natural use of land and the selection of indigenous plants. He also developed an economical construction system of pre-cast interlocking structural tiles, which he called 'Knitlock', and used it widely, as well as stone, in the houses of Castlecrag. In the early 1930s, Griffin built incinerators for the destruction of household garbage in various cities and suburbs in the eastern states of Australia. They provided a canvas for experimentation with form and texture for the architect, but sadly few have survived (Jahn, 1997, p. 221).
Two Griffin incinerators survive in suburban Sydney: the Glebe Municipal Incinerator (City of Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2000 local heritage item); and the Willoughby Incinerator (State Heritage Register (SHR) listing #84).
Griffin's work took him to India in 1935 and he died there two years later of peritonitis (Jahn, 1997, p. 221).
Griffin's contribution to the development of the Wrightian / Prairie School style internationally has begun to receive attention from architectural historians in recent years. It is now increasingly acknowledged that Griffin contributed a number of fresh concepts to the Prairie School, most noticeably: his attention to vertical space (a development leading directly to the ubiquitous split-level style post-war houses); 'open plan' living and dining areas dominated by a large central fireplace; and the extensive domestic use of reinforced concrete. (Kirk, Andrew, 'Prairie School Connection', , cited 3rd December 2007)
Griffin is also internationally renowned for his work as a landscape architect, especially the innovative town planning design of Canberra and Castlecrag, Griffith and Leeton.
Griffin's design approaches to landscape and architecture informed one another. Landscape itself, for example, crucially served as a basis for architecture - a conviction first made explicit in the Canberra publicity, Griffin noting (in Chicago) that: '...a building should ideally be "the logical outgrowth of the environment in which [it is] located".' In Australia, he hoped to 'evolve an indigenous type, one similarly derived from and adapted to local climate, climate and topography.' In Australia the scale and number of his landscape commissions grew considerably, including a number of town plans. Griffin signed many of his drawings with the term 'landscape architect'. (Stuart Read, in http://www.griffinsociety.org.au/lives and works/landscape_architecture cited 21 November 2008).
Willoughby Incinerator
A number of forces resulted in local governments taking responsibility for garbage collection and disposal, following Sydney's 1901 bubonic plague epidemic, through to the construction of efficient municipal incinerators in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Willoughby Incenerator was one of these responses (McKillop, 2012).
The Walter Burley Griffin Incinerator in Willoughby was built between 1933 and 1934. It commenced operations on 7 May 1934. It was officially opened by the Mayor of Willoughby on 6 September 1934 and became known as the Municipality of Willoughby Reverberatory Refuse Incinerator. It was one of a number using the Australian patented Reverberatory Refuse Incinerator Company invention. These included incinerators at Pyrmont, Randwick, Glebe, Leichhardt, Pymble and Waratah in New South Wales, Essendon and Brunswick in Victoria, Ipswich in Queensland, Hindmarsh in South Australia and one built in Canberra after Griffin's death in 1938. The Willoughby Incinerator was Griffin's most successful adaptation of the vertical feed process incinerator to a steeply sloping landscaped site (Brooks, 1996, 5).
Nisson Leonard-Kanevsky, the founder of the REICo (Reverberatory Incinerator and Engineering Company), was an aggressive businessman who spared no effort to convince local councils that the incinerators should be an essential part of local government equipment, and which would be, in Griffin's elegant strutures, a civic embellishment. The Reverberatory Incinerator was an Australian patent which achieved a much higher efficiency than its imported competitors by preheating and partly drying the refuse while it moved down a sloping, vibrating grate in the combustion chamber which itself was designed to reflect (reverberate) heat on to the incoming refuse. The function of the building dictates the location on a slope or embankment as it is an in-line, vertical 'top gravity feed' process. The gravitation of the raw refuse from storage hoppers down to the combustion chamber, the ash pit, and the ash delivery hoppers required truck access on at least two levels, presenting problems of siting and the design of site works, at which Griffin was most adept (Brooks, 1996, 5).
The designs for the incinerators vary widely and there is no doubt that Nicholls contributed to the conception of most, but it is clear that Griffin exerted himself in the Willoughby building, located not far from his residential subdivision at Castlecrag.
The 1930s depression impacted significantly on Willoughby Councli resulting in inadequate funds to install a second furnace or maintain the incinerator. There was a reversion to open-air dumping by the late 1940s and this continued on an increasing scale over the next 20 years (McKillop, 2012).
By the 1960s the Incinerator had fallen into disuse and was closed.
The changes in community values regarding unrestrained development and its impact on the environment that emerged in the late 1960s, influenced local politics from 1974. For Willoughby Council, as elsewhere, there was increasing pressure to manage waste and public open space in accordance with new legislative requirements. The incinerator building was saved from demolition following an active campaign by community groups (McKillop, 2012).
The building was converted to a restaurant in 1982, by Colin Dilworth with the assistance of the NSW Heritage Council. The restaurant operated successfully for several years but became a victim of economic pressure in 1988. At this time the lease was sold to Design Six Properties Pty Ltd. (Goddon Mackay Logan Conservation Conversation/May 21, 2011).
The Australian Bicentennary provided the opportunity to reclaim the adjacent tip through an ambitious project to create a major sporting complex and a lineal park linking Artarmon with Middle Harbour. Community efforts continued to get Council to restore the landscape and conserve the incinerator buildign as a community facility (McKillop, 2012).
In 1989, the new leaseholders were associated with a firm of architects and converted the premises to office space removing much of the interior restaurant equipment. In late 1991 the architects subleased sections of the building to a small communications company, Wavelength.
By the mid 1990s Wavelength Communications occupied the whole building and was used as their corporate headquarters. In 1995 the site was listed as a local heritage item on WIlloughby Local Environmental Plan.
The incinerator was damaged by fire in August 1996. In September 1997 the Incinerator has been restored to office space potential.
In 1999 the site was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register. In 2001 a 'History, Significance and Management' report was prepared by Meredith Walker and Trevor Waters (GML, 2016, 3).
In 2006 a Conservation Management Plan and Asset Management Strategy was prepared by GML Heritage (ibid, 2016, 4).
In 2008 approvals were given for conservation works to restore the incinerator building and adaptively reuse it as a community hall, artist studio and cafe (ibid, 2016, 4). On 21/5/2011 the building reopened to the public after extensive works. It has an art gallery opening on the lower level, artist studio space on the middle level and a cafe to come.
Council also put the chimney back - a great show of faith in the property's future (Goddon Mackay Logan Conservation Conversation/May 21, 2011).
In 2014 the cafe opened at street level (ibid, 2016, 4). |
