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 Professor Julie Willis explores the proposals of third-placed architect Donald Turner, and the fifth-placed design by Arthur Stephenson and Percy Meldrum.
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.
Julie Willis is an architectural historian from the University of Melbourne, and joins me now to unpack the stories behind three more of the finalists in the Victorian War Memorial design competition. Welcome Julie.
JULIE WILLIS: Thanks so much, Laura.
LAURA THOMAS: Now let's start by speaking about the third placed architect, and that's Donald Turner. Where did his architectural career begin?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, Donald Turner is educated in Sydney and does the sort of normal, the normal way an architect is actually trained at that point in time, so he completes his articles. He then joins the AIF and goes overseas, and as part of the demobilization program, lots of Australian architects who enrolled in the AIF got an opportunity to go and do some further education in architectural schools in London. So he then went to the Architectural Association in London and was working with a major UK architect, and then got some work in the Imperial War Graves Commission.
LAURA THOMAS: Tell me a little bit about that. What was the Imperial War Graves Commission all about?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, it was about building memorials where war had occurred, the sort of theaters of war, to commemorate those who were killed in action in those places. And so that was a very large program, creating monuments right across Europe, but also into places like Egypt.
LAURA THOMAS: As you mentioned, Turner saw conflict. He joined the Australian Imperial Force and served as a gunner on the Western Front. Did his experiences in conflict inform his work with the Imperial War Graves Commission?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, theoretically, yes, but you've got to remember that the memorialisation of war is almost the complete antithesis of what war actually is, the experience of war. And so the War Graves Commission is creating places that are about contemplation and about seriousness of purpose. They're clean, they're serene, they're often white. Theatre of war, dirty, noisy, chaotic, it's so interesting that they're far apart. Now my view is that architects can imagine what it is to memorialise something, so the sort of need of war service to be able to design something that commemorates it isn't necessarily needed. But of course, there would have been a real push to get architects back into practice. They've given their time and their service for the Empire, so giving them meaningful work afterwards becomes a really important thing. So it's not necessarily that you've been in war to be able to design one of these things, but it's a whole complex thing about memorialisation and providing access to meaningful work after that period of war service.
LAURA THOMAS: What kind of projects was Turner working on specifically?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, we know that he was involved in the design of a monument in Egypt, and he's working closely with Sir John Burnet, who had worked for when he was studying at the Architectural Association. And Burnet's a really accomplished architect, and Turner, an accomplished architect in his own right, there would have been, Turner would have really appreciated working with Burnet in these projects.
LAURA THOMAS: So then the design competition for Victoria's war memorial is announced. Was Turner still overseas working when this announcement came?
JULIE WILLIS: Yes, he was. So he didn't return to Australia until after the competition was closed, but he returned in 1923 when the competition was running. So he was very close to coming home, but he hadn't quite yet left the UK.
LAURA THOMAS: And can you talk me through his design? What did he envisage for the memorial?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, a very strong pylon or pillar to the middle of a curved colonnade, like arms that wrapped out behind this to draw people into the place itself. It is quite reduced in its detailing, modern for that period of time, very thoughtful, careful detailing, the play of shadows across the facades would have been important as well. But about a place apart, a place separated. So the pylon being the focus of the memorialisation, the colonnade around as a place for people to walk and to to think about those who are lost in the war conflict.
LAURA THOMAS: Are there connections that you can draw, then, between his design, you mentioned that kind of processional movement, that modernism, that quite clean design. Are there links there with this and his work in the Imperial War Graves Commission? Can you see the similarities?
JULIE WILLIS: Yes, absolutely. Similar kinds of thinking expressed in that slightly earlier work, particularly in the detailing around the top of the pylon, looks very similar to some of the work that's being done through Imperial War Graves Commission.
LAURA THOMAS: And what about the feel that he was trying to get people to go through as they were visiting? Was there kind of a somber nature that he was leaning towards? Again, linking back?
JULIE WILLIS: Oh, absolutely. This is about slowing down, processing, thinking, each step is considered. It's also about a different emotion as you go through a place, a place of awe. So scale is very important, that you look up to something and you feel small in looking at it. It's about careful procession through a place that changes your feeling or your demeanor as you go through it.
LAURA THOMAS: One thing I found interesting as well in Turner's design is that he had an inclusion of a stone of remembrance. Now, that's something that is in the Shrine of Remembrance today. Is that something that you think a lot of the architects were looking at as kind of a reflection piece, a center point?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, of course, it's, it's a place of memorialisation without actually a focus on- there are no bodies to be crude about it. You need to create a focal point without the object. You're trying to draw on memory. So this is a way of focusing that and giving a location for that memory to be played out. But it's neutral. It means that any memory can be played out on it. It doesn't have to be a specific memory. It can be anything, but it's it's meant to focus your view in on that.
LAURA THOMAS: Why was it important for Turner to have a submission in this competition? Do you think?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, of course, it's something that's prominent. It would have been the commission to get, as a young architect returning from war service to get your name on something like this is to find effectively, instant fame.
LAURA THOMAS: Now it's here that I'm going to bring in another few architects who entered the design competition, and they placed fifth with their design 'A Cenotaph', and sixth with their triumphal arch. And their names are Arthur Stephenson and Percy Meldrum. Who were Stephenson and Meldrum and what was their first encounter with Turner? Because there are some links here in this architectural community.
JULIE WILLIS: Absolutely, so Stephenson and Meldrum become one of Australia's major practices, but not until the mid late 1920s. All three men met through the Architectural Association in London in 1919. Percy Meldrum was teaching there, and both Donald Turner and Arthur Stephenson had been in war service in the AIF, and had come to do the education program. And so the three of them are in this sort of cauldron of excitement, which is sort of post war London, and then they are coming back to Australia. Stephenson particularly was encouraged to return to Australia, he was weighing up whether he would or not, to be sort of the next generation of architects. Meldrum follows him, and they set up and practice together. Turner, of course, arrives a little bit later. They create the space for Turner to work, so he's in their offices. And in fact, when he returns to Sydney, he sets up the Sydney office of Stephenson and Meldrum, which eventually becomes Stephenson, Meldrum and Turner, and then Stephenson and Turner.
LAURA THOMAS: As I'm learning as the more and more I research about this, the architectural community at that time was very close. There were lots of links and things like that, with this Stephenson and Meldrum design, are you seeing some influences from Turner there? We'll dive into the design itself in a second. But I'm just curious, is there some similarities or influences?
JULIE WILLIS: Hard to tell, because some of the aspects of the design we see very much as, they're contemporary ideas and some of the work that we know they were doing at the Architectural Association looks at this kind of memorialisation and the way it uses symmetry and massing, the details they were all in play at that point in time. So rather than being perhaps influenced by Turner, they're getting the same influences that Turner was exposed to. So we do see similarities, because they're working in a sort of milieu of ideas, and they're all sort of popping out somewhat similar ideas at the time.
LAURA THOMAS: Now we talk about their sixth place submission in another episode. So can you describe their fifth place design for Victoria's war memorial?
JULIE WILLIS: So rather like Turner's idea, they had a central focus. This is a sort of ceremonial mound that was meant to be the repository of memory. It too has a colonnade that edges that, gives space but provides edge to it. It's not circular. This one is actually sort of like half a square. What's distinctive about this is the use of sculpture that's very prominent in the design. And there's almost no doubt Percy Meldrum was responsible for those designs. He was very artistic, connected with a lot of Melbourne's artistic community, people like Norman Lindsay. And so there's almost no question that that's who's responsible for those and they're to give symbolism of various aspects of war, but also to sort of lift the emotions towards higher purpose.
LAURA THOMAS: And again, there's a stone of remembrance included in this. So again, is that the reference to the fact that there were no bodies to commemorate?
JULIE WILLIS: Yes, so many of these things actually make subtle reference to funerary architecture of ancient, ancient Greece and things like that. So they are making deliberate connections back in the kind of forms that they're using here. But yes, not anything tangible to memorialise, but a repository for emotion and ideas.
LAURA THOMAS: Like Turner, Stephenson was a veteran, and he was actually awarded a Military Cross for his service, which will be on display as part of this exhibition at the Shrine. Did his military service impact on his vision at all. Can we see any references there?
JULIE WILLIS: That's really hard to tell, because in the partnership of Stephenson and Meldrum, Meldrum is known to be much more of the hands on designer than Stephenson. That doesn't take away the role. That means that we can't be sure how much of a direct hand Stephenson had in the design. There are certainly works that he did while at the Architectural Association that echo work like this. And so there would have been a meeting of minds over the design, and they would have talked through different aspects of it. Whether his war service, again, as I mentioned before, the war service, whether it impacts hard to know, but he would have been trying to create a feeling that's so far away from the battlefield, trying to create a spiritual experience, not the reality of war.
LAURA THOMAS: Now I would like you to try and go back in time for me here, Julie, we're talking today about the third and the fifth place designs. What do you think that the Shrine of Remembrance, the design, had that these two designs didn't? Why didn't they become the building that we're sitting in here recording today?
JULIE WILLIS: The design that's built is a pretty extraordinary design. First of all, it can be seen in the round. That means you recognise the building no matter which angle you're looking at it. And it is an extraordinary focus. So you know exactly what place to look at when you see the building. The fact that it is raised up on steps is very clever, because you can't run up those steps without feeling as though you're doing the wrong thing. So you need to slow down. You need to give effort into rising to the chamber on top of the stepped mound, and that means that you are going through that process of changing your demeanor and your engagement with the architecture and the place as you use it, essentially, as you experience it. So that idea of a place apart, the elevation of that, literally stepping up to it, is a very clever device, and it means that people who visit become part of that experience as they go through it.
LAURA THOMAS: Do you think that is something that was lacking in the other designs?
JULIE WILLIS: When you're on the same ground plane, you don't have that separation. If we look at most of the public buildings in Melbourne, they often have steps. And if we think about Parliament House, it too has a set of processional steps to go up, and you have to go up those relatively slowly. It's a clever device. It's something that PB Hudson understood, and it instantly tells you public building, place apart and a place where you need to behave and to think about your behaviour.
LAURA THOMAS: After the design competition, Stephenson Meldrum and Turner all spent much of the 20s specialising in institutional and hospital designs. Can we see any early manifestations of this kind of aesthetic in their submission for the memorial?
JULIE WILLIS: Not necessarily, but they're focusing on public buildings, which is a particular way of designing. You've got to remember at the time, the kind of styles that are uses for a public building, as opposed to the styles you might use for a house, are very different. But their interest in hospital really takes off in 1926 when there is a meeting of architects held in Melbourne, promoting to them the idea that the hospital system was about to change and that there are all these opportunities to design them. And it's held at the behest of an American doctor who's out to talk to the New South Wales and Victorian State governments about their hospital systems. Arthur Stephenson goes and he gets very excited. He can see the possibilities for his fledgling firm to become a really dominant player through this. And in fact, what happens is that they become internationally renowned just from that moment of sitting in a meeting and having that light bulb moment that says, 'Oh, I can see the future. I can see great success for us as a firm.'
LAURA THOMAS: It's quite interesting when we talk about the fact that the Victorian war memorial competition, there was a lot of public backlash that maybe it should have been a hospital. It should have been a utilitarian monument, rather than what we have today. It's interesting what could have happened if it was a hospital, and then maybe the design competition would be a bit different.
JULIE WILLIS: Absolutely, and we do see the memorialisation of war in lots of public buildings. So bizarrely, things like baby health centres.
LAURA THOMAS: Right.
JULIE WILLIS: And swimming pools, all sorts of different buildings were used to memorialise war effort or war contributions, but it's interesting that there are still a lot of standalone war memorials, and each capital city tends to have one that is not a building that's occupied or used in other ways, and that means that all the ceremonial processes that happen, which have largely built up since that time, they have a focus, a place to be, and they have become more and more sacred places, places that you can't use for anything else. So if you had built a hospital, and said the War Memorial Hospital, there would have been a conflict about what its purpose was, and the way we see the Shrine, the important part that it plays in Victorians lives wouldn't have occurred in the same way.
LAURA THOMAS: And do you think again, it comes down to the design, the character that it holds within Melbourne?
JULIE WILLIS: It's a distinctive design. It's a great design, because you can do a silhouette of it, and people still know what it is. It's so dominant in Melbourne, that long run down Swanston Street being able to see it at the end. So city visitors, anyone coming to Melbourne gets a glimpse of that Shrine. They don't even need to know what it is, but it's got such a distinctive presence. It's very successful from that point of view.
LAURA THOMAS: And that's the legacy that Hudson and Wardop left with the Shrine of Remembrance. But what about Turner, Meldrum and Stephenson, what legacy did they leave on Melbourne architecture or global architecture?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, they did some really distinctive things, so yes, they specialised in hospitals, and many, many, many hospitals in Melbourne, in Sydney and beyond, are designed by that firm. The meeting that I mentioned about Stephenson prompted him to head off to his bank manager and say, I want you to give me sufficient money so I can travel to America for a year to find out the best about hospitals. His bank manager said yes. Off he went, toured all those then he came back to Melbourne and designed a number of hospital buildings. Decided that it was really important to go again. So 1932 he took himself off to America and Europe. And this is the pivotal moment. When he's in Europe, he goes to visit a whole series of healthcare buildings and sees some of the most amazing modernist buildings, most up to date, and is so inspired by them that he comes back and starts designing his hospitals in that way. So the Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne is the first genuine international modernism that we have in Australia. It's got a big role in promoting modernism as a new style of architecture, as a new way of thinking about architecture. So all of those things line up, and indeed, Stephenson's capacity to visit those buildings in Europe that were so important came through his connections with the Architectural Association, a member of whom took him to Europe to go and visit them, specifically on that trip. So we see that wartime experience and the connections he made being played out. He might not have been successful in the War Memorial competition here in Victoria, but it set him, helped set him on this path to extraordinary influence in the world of hospital designs, and he was internationally fated for it.
LAURA THOMAS: How about Meldrum? What did he go on to do?
JULIE WILLIS: Well, Stephenson and Meldrum were in partnership for quite a long time with a very large bust up in 1937 and they went their separate ways. And in fact, it was over the hospital work. Stephenson wanted to keep going, and Meldrum was getting a bit tired of it, so Meldrum went and formed his own firm, Meldrum and Node. And Stephenson continued his partnership with Turner, who was in Sydney, and they became Stephenson and Turner.
LAURA THOMAS: Well, thank you so much, Julie for filling us in on the designers that could have been behind Victoria's war memorial, what we now know as the Shrine. It's been fascinating to hear from you.
JULIE WILLIS: Thank you so much.
Updated