Canberra’s architectural legacy, and the people carrying the batten today

Kingsborough Woolstore Building by DNA Architecture

The story of Canberra’s early architectural legacy is widely known, but the story of our biggest era of development, or the wealth of the community carrying the batten today is often overlooked.

As a firm, we treasure the immense legacy of Australia’s First Nation Peoples, and particularly those of the land we are grateful to get to live and work on, the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and the Ngarigu people. We acknowledge that we are only just beginning to fully appreciate the history, knowledge and stories of these great cultures, and look to always listen, learn and embrace the life that was lived here long before Canberra as a city was ever conceived.

We treasure our city’s inception and the story of the incredible couple who dared to bring the idea of a new Australian life to an area previously known to most as a sheep paddock. Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin brought to Canberra ideas the likes of which Australia had not seen, and the seeds of a city were planted. The fact that the first female in America to be given architectural registration played such a fundamental hand in the creation of our city is not lost on the women that make up The Mill.

And we treasure our city’s second period of great development, the one that saw Marion’s idea of the lake as a central heart to the city brought into fruition with the creation of a city of architectural riches rightfully unique to Canberra.

But above all else, we treasure the fact that Canberra is today home to a creative scene to be intensely proud of. From makers to planners and architects, the breadth of knowledge, creativity and passion that surrounds us inspires us every day.  We love the sense of collaboration between genres, firms and designers.  And we love how passionately Canberrans love and advocate for their city.

So if you have some free time, or want to know more about the city around us, look around you. New and old, Federation and Modernist, Canberra is a city just waiting to be explored.