PhD Thesis on the architecture of Newman College available online
Jeffrey Turnbull, Walter Burley Griffin: the architecture of Newman College,
e-book, University of Melbourne, 2015
This study engaged with the architecture of the ‘Initial Structure’ at Newman College, 1915-1918, so as to establish this building’s place in the oeuvre of Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937).
Griffin was inspired with the works of Philibert de l’Orme, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Hobson Richardson, and Louis Sullivan. He drew upon both Occidental and Oriental architectural motifs, Ancient to Modern.
Griffins’ Initial Structure has the regularity that comes about through structural articulation of mass, and a modulus, celebrates the intrinsic surfaces and colours of the materials of construction, and through its basic shapes and embellishments, it is loaded with associations. The quest for ‘ideal purpose’ informed the planning, constructional, and formal choices of all elements in the design. Stylistically, the Initial Structure is ‘without cult’, a unique monument, which defies categorization.
