A century ago, a public design competition resulted in the grand architecture of the Shrine of Remembrance. For 90 years it has stood as an iconic sentinal in Melbourne's architecture, so it's hard to imagine anything else in its place...
In this series, you'll uncover the the designs that could have been Victoria's War Memorial and the architects behind them.
Listen as Dr Katti Williams unpacks the second-placed design by William Lucas, and the controversy that followed when he wasn't crowned the winner.
Transcript
LAURA THOMAS: It’s the fourth of August , 1921, just under three years after the end of the First World War. There’s a meeting in Melbourne Town Hall where the Minister for Public Works, Frank Clarke, moves a motion for a National War Memorial for Victoria to be built in Melbourne. He says the monument should commemorate ‘the services of those who enlisted and fought in the Great War’
It’s a time when you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t been touched by the tragedy of conflict … so the stakes are high. An architectural competition is announced to decide what the memorial will look like, and ‘Australasians and British Subjects resident in Australia’ are invited to try their hand at the design.
A site is chosen – The Grange, it’s called - at the corner of Domain and St Kilda Roads, and by the competition closing date on 30 June 1923, 83 designs have been submitted. Of these, six are shortlisted. The winner, A Shrine of Remembrance, is announced on 13 December 1923.
Today, the Shrine of Remembrance is an iconic sentinel in Melbourne’s architecture. It’s hard to imagine the building looking any other way. Welcome to Designing Remembrance, a series where we uncover the designs that could have been, and the architects behind them.
From accusations of architectural plagiarism to spats over the function of the memorial, you’ll get a glimpse into the past and discover the roads not taken.
LAURA THOMAS: I'm Laura Thomas, and in this episode, we'll introduce you to the second place architect William Lucas. Dr Katti Williams is a research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and she's done a PhD thesis on William Lucas and his war memorial design, so it's safe to say I think she's going to give us all the information we need to know. Thanks for joining us, Katti.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Thanks so much.
LAURA THOMAS: Now let's start off with William Lucas himself. Tell me a bit about him. Who was he?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Well, he was quite a character. He was an older man, so he was too old to serve in the First World War. He was born in around 1860 in Melbourne, and he trained as an architect in England. He then came back to Australia in around 1883 started practice, and at this point, he became quite involved with Collins Street Baptist Church, and this would actually be a really fundamental component of his aesthetic mindset and his spiritual mindset, his intellectual mindset, and he very much pictured war as a spiritual endeavour. So the idea of war itself was horrific, but within his mindset and within his own spiritual outlook, war could be an analogy for spiritual redemption.
KATTI WILLIAMS: So he already had some some familiarity with the concept of war as a spiritual endeavor. In the early 1890s he actually moved from Australia to South Africa, and he took his family with him. And of course, what happens towards the end of the 19th century, but the South African war, so he actually had a very, very interesting role in this, because he was one of the very first YMCA volunteers to man the correspondence tents and to accompany the troops into battle. So not actually serving himself, but camping with the men and visiting them in hospitals afterwards. So his accounts from the time are very much sort of approaching the soldiers almost as grist for a spiritual mill. As potential, you know, converts, but not in a, not in a manipulative sense, but more in that, you know, if these men have gone through this terrible, terrible experience, then they may be more likely to embrace Christ. Then Lucas is doing his work, and then he's also helping in his mind these soldiers to come to terms with what they've seen and what they've experienced.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Feeding into his idea of war is his own visual experience. So as I said, he didn't actually serve himself, but he did watch battle play out from a from a distance. So his experience of battle was basically gained from the mountaintops, and he has these wonderful descriptions of standing and watching through his field glasses the bombardment and the groups of troops moving across the plains. So he had a very definite visual image of what he believed war to have been like.
LAURA THOMAS: Is it fair to say he saw war somewhat as a spectacle, like looking on?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Very much so, because he was viewing it from a remove. He was watching these actions playing out, and being able to see them relatively clearly, in some instances, from the mountaintops, with the commanding officers not actually being involved. And it's a very different landscape to the Western Front, for example, where you have a war of attrition, you have trench warfare, you have the mud you still had, you know, extremes of weather and so forth during the South African Campaign. But the landscape itself, and certainly Lucas's ability to view it, is very, very different.
LAURA THOMAS: And the realities of war did eventually hit him, though, because his son, Norman, who served with the Royal Irish Rifles, was killed during the First World War. So Katti, how did this news impact him and his experiences?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Look, the impact of Norman's death had a few different facets. So on one hand, it was, as he wrote, unbearably tragic, yet he was also extremely proud of what his son had done. He very much felt that his son had died for God's cause. His son was a Christian soldier. He had conducted himself with bravery and certainly all the letters that were written home, and the reports sort of very much emphasised, as these generally tended to, very much emphasised the heroism of the person who died, and the idea of pain and so forth is sort of removed.
LAURA THOMAS: Lucas was an architect by trade, so it did kind of make sense that he would enter the design competition. But did his son's death have weight to his design? Did we see influence of that reflected?
KATTI WILLIAMS: I think we definitely do. First of all, Lucas would disagree that he was a trade. He would would have said he was a member of a profession.
LAURA THOMAS: Ah, okay, yeah.
KATTI WILLIAMS: He was very much seeing architecture as a way in which to order society, which was quite, you know, a common, common thread at the time. So for him, in commemorating his son, he also wanted to serve a broader community purpose. And in 1919, he circulated a suggestion for a memorial, which was based around pretty much a hybrid of a Greco Roman theatre, a bit of examples from ancient Greece and from ancient Rome. He had visited the Mediterranean in 1908 and had been very, very taken with the architecture and with the religious significance as well. So when he came to design a memorial, of course, his son's death is part of the reason he wanted to participate, but he really wanted to create a place where Victorian citizens could rise like phoenixes above. You know, from the ashes of war, rise above, renew their societal commitments and move forward as a as a civilization.
LAURA THOMAS: So talk me through how he did that. Let's get into the nitty gritty of Lucas's design. What was it?
KATTI WILLIAMS: So his design of 1919 was produced at a time where there was a lot of keen discussion. One of the more prominent suggestions that had been made was the idea of a triumphal arch, which was promulgated by Harold Desbrowe Annear and was further refined. But for a while it looked as if the triumphal arch might have been the solution, but Lucas, on the other hand, felt very strongly that a theatre form was the most appropriate use. He'd been very taken by Greco Roman theatres during his travels. He'd also seen during his time in South Africa how a theatre form could be used as a gathering place. It had been used very famously in Herbert Baker's design for the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Lucas had reviewed that and talked about how it was a wonderful gathering place for the society.
KATTI WILLIAMS: So Lucas selected a site. This is before the site for the memorial had actually been determined. He selected a site at the foot of Exhibition Street, where it abuts Flinders Street. And I think we all know it. It's that really, really steep section of land. And you know, the city seems to drop away and then right in front of you, or would have used to have been in front of you with a sort of the train lines, and then look over the river, and then looking straight through to Government House. So what he decided to do there was essentially to nestle a theatre form, so a stepped, a stepped, semi circular space into the sloping ground with a couple of museums on either side, sort of small curved museums. So right at the top of the curve, on the highest point of the ground, he wanted to put a ceremonial form of some sort, like a column or a pillar. This is a couple of months before Edward Lutyens’ design for the Cenotaph at Whitehall had been built in its temporary form. And at the other end, he put a podium. And what he explicitly saw was that there would obviously be ceremonial purposes, but also that there would be the opportunity for oratory competitions and other cultural events to be held there, and that this particular space would become inextricably linked with the civic life.
LAURA THOMAS: Why was that so important to him?
KATTI WILLIAMS: There was a long standing belief in some quarters that perhaps war was a necessary thing if a culture, culture had become too too flabby, I believe, with the words.
LAURA THOMAS: Right, direct quote
KATTI WILLIAMS: Not Lucas's, but you know, if something had become too flabby or too debauched, perhaps war was a necessary mechanism for getting society again on the right track, and look, these beliefs and permutations of them, and they underpin a lot of British culture. And it's, we don't have time to go into them too deeply, but Lucas believed that this was really important. And the idea of having citizens gathering together also comes back to the idea of preaching and the idea of religious community. Collins Street Baptist Church was an evangelical church, and there was a long tradition of preaching in the open air. Certainly, a lot of non conformist churches like Baptist churches were built around a theatre sort of model as well. So the congregation was positioned in a curve so that everyone could hear the word of the preacher.
LAURA THOMAS: So he had come up with this design prior to the announcement of the Victorian war memorial design competition?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Yes
LAURA THOMAS: And is that the design that he then submitted into the competition, or did he make some changes before it went in?
KATTI WILLIAMS: No, he made a few changes. Well, first of all, the site for the competition had already been set, and it was, as we know, where the Shrine now stands, that was the chosen site, and so Lucas had to adapt whatever scheme he had in mind to that site. Now, the new site had a much gentler gradient. Was much larger. It also had the opportunities for views from multiple directions, from the city, from the bay, and also from St Kilda Road, which he described as, you know, a grand Imperial Highway coming from the south, which is quite interesting, the idea of people approaching Melbourne from the south, whereas now we would perceive it to be the other way around.
KATTI WILLIAMS: So in order to fit his design to the site, he had to make it quite a bit larger, but he also tweaked it quite significantly. What really comes through is a sense of growing abstraction. Whereas beforehand, you had a fairly traditional theatre form with the central stage and then rows and rows of seating, which were divided into segments by stairways, you get a far looser interpretation of a theatre form. And the other thing that he did, he expanded the central piazza into a full circle, and he introduced a different form for the ceremonial feature.
LAURA THOMAS: And what was that?
KATTI WILLIAMS: That was look, it's quite a weird one, and it really, really shows the influence that Lutyens's cenotaph had had. So at the head of the curve, instead of a column or an obelisk or a pylon, he placed a large rectangular form, and he pierced it with an archway. Yet made it very clear in his design report, it wasn't to be read as a triumphal arch. Instead, this archway actually shielded a seat, like a stone couch of some sort, which he placed there so that pilgrims to the site could sit in shelter and contemplate the memorial as a whole, and in particular, so they could view the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that he'd placed at the very centre of the circular piazza. Unfortunately, the Tomb of the Unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey was considered to be the single representative for the entire Commonwealth until 1993 when an Australian unknown was brought back. So this device would never have been built, and I'm not sure what Lucas would have intended to do instead, perhaps a sculpture, perhaps a simple slab, like a stone of remembrance.
LAURA THOMAS: And what was the public reaction to his submission? What did people have to say about it?
KATTI WILLIAMS: One critic, William Blamire Young wrote that 'Lucas is a man who does his own thinking', and he absolutely was. Certainly the design was considered beautiful enough to be awarded second place. Though, what's clear in a lot of the commentary around the time is that people didn't understand what Lucas was trying to do. They didn't get the reference to a theatre. Instead, they focused on that central terminal form, the rectangular form with the carved out archway in it.
LAURA THOMAS: And they didn't like that?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Well, I think they misinterpreted it. They were reading that central, rectangular structure as a memorial in its own right. So they were criticizing it as being too similar to Lutyens cenotaph in Whitehall. And there are look, there are similarities, the same sort of delicate setbacks within a really vertical monument. But what Lucas had intended was that this was just one element within that broader theatrical scheme. So there was one particular theatre that Lucas was really responding to, and that was the Pnyx, which was the meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly in Athens, and it had a very large sort of, almost basically just remnants now, but a large, sort of semicircular shape with a raised beamer or speaker's platform. And it had the most amazing view he wrote, of the surrounding waters. And if we look at where Lucas had placed on this particular memorial on the site, and the aspect that it was trying to harness was the view of the bay and the view across the waters.
KATTI WILLIAMS: And that had particular resonance, too. If you think about where the troops left from, and how they came home, and how overseas visitors would approach Melbourne, and how visitors traveling by ship from other states, they would come into those waters. It's something we forget. We're so attuned to the idea of, you know, just flying in over, you know, flying into Tullamarine.
LAURA THOMAS: Yeah, exactly.
KATTI WILLIAMS: That you don't, it's like we sort of think about how Melbourne is approached by road now, as opposed to how Melbourne was approached by road then, and how travel and transport really impact how we perceive a city and its landmarks. So this was the particular example that Lucas was trying to recreate. And within it, you know the idea of the democratic assembly. So again, bringing in these ideas, these idealised aspects of ancient civilization, in order to help us, a civilisation, move forward and heal from war. And there's a further strand that's particularly relevant, which is that when Lucas went to the Ancient World in 1908, he was also tracing the steps of St Paul, the evangelist. So there's also that subtle infiltration, perhaps not so subtle, infiltration, of his own fervent religious belief.
LAURA THOMAS: So it was in the Young review of all of the designs that he said, and I'm quoting here, 'Though I enjoy the method of this opening, I question the capacity of the man in the street to think in plan, or at any rate, to do so sufficiently clearly to avoid a sense of bewilderment at what is expected of him'. Do you think that kind of sums up this, I guess, public not exactly understanding what he was going for here?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Yep, and I think it's something that I think a lot of the entrants would have had a similar, similar problem. Certainly also coming into play is the fact that everyone's a stakeholder. Everyone has their own take on what they think is appropriate, whether or not it's a utilitarian memorial, so one that has a distinct function, like a hospital that's essentially a memorial, only in name, or whether it's a non-utilitarian or purely symbolic monument, and dealing with extremely heightened emotions as well. But I think maybe people just didn't quite understand what Lucas was doing. In any case, we'll, we'll never know for sure, because it wasn't the structure that was that was built. But, I, I do sometimes wonder what would happen if that structure had been built today. And I remember doing a talk years ago and saying, you know, perhaps the steps would become a skateboarders’ paradise and the seat of remembrance, a place of bibulous repose, you know, sort of imagining, you know, what would happen to that monument at night time. How would the city use that monument? I expect it would have been used, but in a very, very different way to how Lucas had intended.
LAURA THOMAS: Right. Now, we know, as you mentioned, Lucas came second. How did he take the news that his design wasn't going to be the one that would be built?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Well, Lucas has received a pretty bad rap ever since the competition. The generally accepted belief is that Lucas had a massive attack of sour grapes, but it's a lot more complex than that. It's a lot more nuanced. We need to remember that this was a man who had an unshakable sense of principle, and if that principle was violated, then he would stand up for it and okay, he would have been disappointed, I expect, but he was also an experienced enough practitioner and educator to accept that if his design was not selected as the winner, so be it. He reviewed the competition. He created an unpublished review, which is reposited within the State Library of Victoria, and it's actually really interesting reading. And his own taste comes through in reviewing the designs that were submitted. But he doesn't, he's able to give praise where he felt praise is due.
KATTI WILLIAMS: What it essentially comes down to is he felt that there was something dodgy design wise. He felt that there was architectural plagiarism at play. So what Lucas became really fixated on is that he felt the Shrine was too similar to a range of other designs that had been recently published in the architectural press. He criticised its similarity to four different buildings. First of all, he said this design is very similar to the Birmingham Hall of Memory in England and to the Scottish Rite Temple in Washington. And then shortly after this, he came across two further structures that were even more similar. And Lucas was alleging that these two designs had been mashed together to produce the Shrine. But what he didn't get was that these two designs were responding to another design, which was a conjectural reconstruction of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus that had been produced by a French architect in the 19th century. And so it's really not a clear cut case of plagiarism at all. What it is is that it's a time honoured tradition of representation of the Mausoleum that sort of reaches its its high point really, in the creation of the Shrine of Remembrance. Lucas was doing a similar thing in looking back to an ancient theatre. So it's not plagiarism, it's architectural tradition melded with innovation.
LAURA THOMAS: But did he let it go? Did he see it that way?
KATTI WILLIAMS: No, No. Lucas, as I said, was man of dogged principle and tenacious to a fault. And if he believed something had been wronged, if he believed that a principle was at stake, he would stand up for that principle. To what degree this may have been influenced by the death of his son and the ongoing trauma of that we'll never know. We can't ascribe motive to him, but I think once he saw the course of action and committed himself to it, he wasn't about to deviate from that. He genuinely felt aggrieved, and it was more the broader issue of the implications of, you know, plagiarism, than a personal insult.
LAURA THOMAS: Did this grievance that he held with the design competition link to the fact that he was removed from the Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects? Is that linked?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Oh, yes, because as editor of the journal, he would have had, he would have had the perfect venue in which to further discussion and debate over the situation.
LAURA THOMAS: How did Hudson and Wardrop, so the architects that won the design competition that led to the Shrine of Remembrance that we have today, how did they react to his very vocal anger and frustration?
KATTI WILLIAMS: With equally vocal and understandable indignation. They were reported in the Argus as explaining that, and I quote 'every great monument and building belonged to a particular architectural family, and that their design undoubtedly had an affinity with the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus'. So they emphasised this was part of a tradition. They were responding to tradition.
LAURA THOMAS: Now, William Lucas did go on to enter other competitions for national war memorials. Were any of those designs successful?
KATTI WILLIAMS: He entered the competition for the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and wasn't placed. There was one that he was particularly successful with, was the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France. He actually won that competition, but unfortunately, the commission was taken away from him. The official reason given was cost, though we do know that at least one of the adjudicators, Talbot Hobbs, did not like the monument, and the project was taken from him and given through the auspices of the Imperial War Graves Commission to Edwin Lutyens. Now, as you can imagine, this was not well received by Lucas, and he continued to rail until the end of his life about this. He actually had a fantastic quote where he described the Australian memorial at Villers Bretonneux as being in every respect, un-Australian.
LAURA THOMAS: Wow.
KATTI WILLIAMS: Yeah. Journalist David Marr absolutely summed it up many years ago when he described Lucas's battle with the authorities over this as 'the last great battle of the Somme'. And I really do, I really feel for Lucas. I mean, he would have been in his late '60s by that stage. I mean, the excitement of having such a large, prominent memorial built on, you know, on the battlefields would have been just, it would have been wonderful for him.
LAURA THOMAS: And so we know that his designs obviously weren't successful in the physical sense. But what legacy do you think that Lucas leaves on the Victorian war memorial design competition, but also Victorian architecture, global architecture as a whole?
KATTI WILLIAMS: Look, I think he's such a wonderful example of intellect, of an interweaving of aesthetic taste, of literary taste, of religious thought, of architectural ability. He was a geographer as well. I mean, he just, he was such an interested and engaged practitioner in every sense of the word, and we know that he had positive relationships with with students and with other practitioners. So in terms of his legacy within Melbourne, his existing designs are not overly well known, I think certainly the time is coming for his legacy to become better known. Most of his impact, I think, was in his writings, and particularly about the Shrine and about the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.
LAURA THOMAS: Well, thank you so much, Katti, for sharing your knowledge, your expertise with us today. It's been fascinating hearing about what the Shrine could have been.
KATTI WILLIAMS: It's been my pleasure. Thank you very much.
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