Parliament House is 30 years old and future ready
Giurgola’s Parliament House and Utzon’s Opera House are Australia’s two great public buildings of the 20th century. Both are prime examples of how architecture gives expression to place. Utzon’s creation is stunning, evoking the atmosphere of location in its form. Giurgola’s house of the people, nestles into the landscape, pulsing with symbolism and grandeur that reaches out to city and nation.
For 30 years our politicians, Canberrans and all Australians have lived with our beautifully understated parliamentary building. We have done so in the justified belief it is thoroughly appropriate for its site and role in our national affairs. It has indeed been a gift to us from principal architect, Romaldo Giurgola, who himself earned the accolade “national treasure”.
Although Aldo has now passed on, his genius in resolving the final threads of the Griffin plan, to produce an efficient parliamentary building and a wonderful statement of Australian aspiration and identity, underscores that accolade. The loss of the architect himself heralds a time of some risk for such a building. While Parliament House was saved from the political conniving that accompanied Burley Griffin’s work, there are signs that the building’s current custodians have perhaps lost some of the passion for protecting the design’s integrity and values.
The current external ‘makeover’, driven seemingly by a surrender to demands of the security community, is yet to be revealed fully to the public. The question to be answered is: will a powerful symbol of democratic openness be reduced to a fear-driven fortress? Based on what has emerged to date it seems the building is being armed with lots of spiky fences. We can but wait to make a final assessment, but the building may come to characterise that much-loved marsupial, the echidna.
It is not surprising that there is some loss of corporate memory, not to mention passion for the integrity of the design. The turnover of MPs and Senators in 30 years has been considerable with only one, the Member or Lingiari, Warren Snowden, having served in both the provisional and new Parliament Houses. Gradually a more managerial approach is evident in matters of building aspiration and symbolism. It was Burley Griffin who first counselled that a building on this site was to “symbolise Australian sentiment, achievement and ideals” – advice that was retailed into the architect’s brief for the building and so elegantly expressed in Giurgola’s design.
The capacity to respond to changes in requirements was a fundamental design principle. The experience of the past 30 years has demonstrated, however, that the parliament was in a far more reforming mindset in the period leading into the design brief (1960s and 70s) than it has been since occupying the building. Some changes, such as electronic voting, were expected but have not eventuated. Other changes that were not at all contemplated, such as a second chamber for the House of Representatives, emerged and have been accommodated.
Some changes, such as the apparent trading of the non-members bar for a child minding centre, result from differences in demographic and workplace cultures. While some say the building’s horizontal spread led to a more impersonal environment, in reality the greatest changes to the functioning of Members and Senators have been the result of telecommunications and social media.
An important requirement of the building brief was its external framing and role as a symbol for the community’s aspirations and national identity. The building’s position at the apex of the Land Axis and Parliamentary Triangle, represented a challenge, particularly when conceiving a building with a notional life of at least 200 years. Giurgola’s view in 1982 was this had to be achieved in a way that involved the “interlacing of elements expressive both of Australia’s aspirations for the future and what Australia is today”. He was conscious that the architectural form of the building needed to accommodate “an ever-renewing sense of identity”. It is in responding to this call that the building’s first 30 years may be just a prelude to what is to come.
In some ways the political dynamic of recent years has seen the Parliament fall short of the expectations and aspirations of the people. This was probably most evident in the protracted and much deferred marriage equality legislation. In this and other cases the people have looked on in apparent frustration, while steadfastly refusing to deliver a comprehensive mandate to either major party.
Since opening in 1988, arguably the building’s most significant events have involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and identity. The presentation and display of petitions to the Parliament by Aboriginal people, including the Barunga Statement of 1988, were true expressions of a voice of the people coming to the Parliament. Passage of the Native Title Act (Mabo) in 1993 was perhaps the first ‘historic’ legislative event in the building. However, the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generation stands as the high point of the building as a setting for events of great national significance. The sight of a packed House of Representatives, Great Hall and an enormous throng that filled Federation Mall, was probably the building’s greatest moment.
Following the recent Uluru Statement, despite its crude rejection by the government, there is a growing sense that the people are again ahead of the Parliament on a major policy issue. The next decade may well see the interlacing of Recognition and Republic in settling new constitutional arrangements, founded on the historical truth of Aboriginal occupation going back 60,000 years.
It is likely such events would also fill the building with a throng of Australians stretching the full extent of Federation Mall. Giurgola’s gift stands ready to greet them, with a flagmast for an emblem that unites us, as a people embracing a 60,000-year history. The building’s future beckons.
Terry Fewtrell worked on the parliament project for the full time of its construction. He is the author of ‘George, Elise and a mandarin – Identity in early Australia’.