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NORTHBOURNE HOUSING GROUP 

CANBERRA, ACT | 1962

Ancher, Mortlock and Murray (architects), with Professor Denis Winston (planner) and Sir John Overall (NCDC head) for the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC)

The Northbourne Housing Group of buildings sought to reinstate Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony’s original plan for Canberra. The Griffins were inspired by City Beautiful principles, a turn-of-the-century American social reform movement that shared the Garden City movement’s ideals of urban morality but with emphasis on grand axes, vistas, and strong focal points. The Griffins’ envisioned Canberra as a people’s capital, with residential buildings symbolically placed along the grand axis with vistas of parliament. The Northbourne Housing Group cleverly realised the symbolic aims of this vision through the prominent placement of public housing along the main axis to the city centre providing a strong, unified character for the avenue.

While different in form to meet a diversity of resident need, the buildings achieve visual unity through their cluster arrangement and the use of uniform modernist detailing, inspired by the Weissenhoff Siedlung (Stuttgart 1927). The building entrances, and the landscaped open space created between buildings, are orientated towards the quieter, minor streets and away from the avenue to create more comfortable, intimate spaces.