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The shaping of the Australian War Memorial began with a compromise but

ended in artistic harmony.

BY ASHLEY EKINS

Few buildings in Australia are as recognisable and distinctive as the Australian War Memorial. Nestled at the base of

Mount Ainslie on the northern end of the central land axis in Walter Burley Griffin’s original 1913 plan for the city of Canberra, the Memorial’s symmetrical, domed form blends with the bush landscape and counter-balances – both physically and symbolically – the only two other buildings on that central axis: the old provisional parliament house, opened in 1927 (now the Museum of Australian Democracy) and the new Australian parliament that opened in the bicentennial year of 1988.

The Memorial was opened to the public in November 1941, 75 years ago. But its origins lay in events a quarter of a century earlier on the other side of the world. It was conceived during some of the darkest years of the First World War. Most believe its roots lie in 1916 on the Western Front in France and in the bloody human cost of that conflict. Following the misconceived attack at Fromelles in French Flanders and the fighting to capture Pozières and

C H A R LE S B E A N ’ SV I S I O N

R E A LI S E DThe losses were a profound shock to

the young nation. In the single month of October 1917, for example, arguably the worst month in Australia’s history, during the battle of Passchendaele more than 6,000 Australian soldiers were killed, died of wounds, or declared missing in action.

The compelling need to grieve and remember such losses was the impulse behind the growth of small-town memorials erected by local communities all over the nation, as well as the large memorials in every major city. By the 1930s there were 1,500 of them, equivalent to one for every 40 men who died. They were

an expression of civic pride, mingling nationalism, patriotism, Imperial loyalty and also personal grief – in many ways, the local memorials were substitute graves for families who could never hope to visit the remote grave sites of their lost soldier sons, fathers, brothers, and uncles.

Charles Bean wanted his proposed national memorial in Canberra to be from its inception a very special place. It was intended to enable visitors to commemorate through understanding and knowledge. As early as 1919 he knew where he thought the Memorial should be placed: just where it stands today. In 1923 the site was confirmed,

Mouquet Farm during the battle of the Somme, Australian casualties in barely eight weeks equalled the sum of those on Gallipoli in eight months during the previous year.

Australia’s official war correspondent Charles Bean, who witnessed these events and their aftermath, was determined that these men and their deeds should not be forgotten. He envisioned a building serving a threefold purpose: as a shrine to their memory, a museum to house their relics, and an archive to preserve the record of their thoughts and deeds.

The First World War was the largest and most costly war in Australia’s history. The scale of the tragic human losses is reflected in the long wall of names recorded on the bronze Roll of Honour in the cloisters of the building’s Commemorative Area. From a population of some 4.5 million people, 417,000 men enlisted, almost half the eligible male population. They were all volunteers: 330,000 of them served overseas; more than 60,000 (one in five of them) died on active service; and one-third of those have no known grave.

The local memorials were substitutes for the remote grave sites of lost sons, fathers, brothers and uncles.

Far left: Architect Emil Sodersteen in 1940. AWM P05077.001

Middle: Canberra c. 1926. The central land axis, seen from Mount Ainslie, looking along the twin rows of plantings for Anzac Parade. The site for the Australian War Memorial lies beyond the trees in the foreground. In the middle distance is the original Parliament House. AWM XS0001

Right: An aerial view of the completed Australian War Memorial building from the north-west just before the official opening on 11 November 1941. AWM P01313.002

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MEMORIAL: ANNIVERSARY

a full two years before it was designed. He encapsulated his vision in his mission statement: “Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.”

An international architectural competition in 1925 attracted 69 entries, but only one provided a solution to the problem of recording all the approximately 60,000 names of the fallen while keeping within the comparatively meagre budget. This was submitted by John Crust, a Department of Works and Railways architect. His design was described as “frugal and ingenious”. It was in a traditional, classical style, “of no great distinction” but presented elegantly simple solutions to the problems of housing the names and combining all the required elements.

Another entry also attracted the attention of the judges. It was submitted by Emil Sodersteen, a young, flamboyant Sydney architect, an avowed modernist, working in the Art Deco style. Sodersteen’s design was judged to be “exceptionally restrained and expressive of the purposes of the building”. He proposed a domed hall of memory, arising from “a fortress-like base” influenced by Byzantine and

Egyptian architecture, whose stepped elements combined with vertical towers, parapets, and the dome.

An architectural marriage was contrived between the practical elements of Crust’s economical design and the originality and flair of Sodersteen’s concepts. They were jointly commissioned to collaborate on a combined plan. Their new version was accepted in 1927, but the beginning of the Depression unfortunately delayed work on the building, which did not resume until 1934.

While Crust managed the project, Sodersteen took control of design. It was a marriage of convenience and perhaps should not have been as successful as it proved. But although the end result was accomplished and fulfilled virtually all that could be achieved within the limited budget, the partnership fractured. Conflict arose between the two architects, who according to Bean had “not much time for each other”. Sodersteen found Crust “stuffy”; and Crust thought Sodersteen was a “slave to fashions”.

Through the 1930s, Sodersteen continued to propose modifications and further refinements. Memorial Director John Treloar complained (referring to Sodersteen) that “all our

“Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.”

efforts to complete the Memorial have been paralysed by one of our architects … [in] trying to force on us alterations in the design which are not wanted.”

Nonetheless, some of Sodersteen’s ideas were brilliant improvements and were adopted, notably his masterful addition of an open entrance with flanking pylons, which visually linked the Memorial through Anzac Parade to the parliament and the landscape beyond. Sodersteen also sought permission to raise the height of the dome by 65 feet (20 metres), but some viewed this as “self-aggrandisement” and the request was rejected by the Memorial’s Board of Trustees in favour of an increase of 5 feet (less than two metres).

Sodersteen finally withdrew from the project in 1938, leaving Crust to complete the building. Their unhappy architectural collaboration had – against the odds – achieved a harmonious fusion of Classical and Art Deco styles in a uniquely distinctive building.

By the time the Memorial finally opened on Armistice Day, 11 November 1941, 23 years after the end of the First World War, Australia was in the grip of an even larger and more costly global conflict. Another quarter of a century would pass before the Hall of Memory was finished, with its superb stained glass and mosaics; and the expanded Roll of Honour for both world wars was not installed until the mid-1960s. By then the Memorial was embedded in Australian popular consciousness as a well-recognised landmark.

The building was not Charles Bean’s vision of a gleaming temple of “white marble, in the purest possible Greek style . . . as the memorial to those who fell in our Thermopylae”,

but a brooding, brown sandstone building, more in keeping with its environment and perhaps even more powerfully reflective of its purpose. And it became undeniably the place of memory, contemplation, study, learning, and commemoration that Bean had envisaged.

The recent nomination of the Memorial as Australia’s “number one landmark” on TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards may have been inconceivable to its founders, but it testifies to the building’s enduring and iconic appeal. The Memorial remains the monumental symbol to all those who have served the nation, and preserves the memory of the more than 102,000 Australians who have died in wars. •

ABOUT THEAUTHOR

Ashley Ekins is the head of the Military History Section of the Australian War Memorial.

Above: Construction began in 1929 but was soon suspended. It resumed in 1934.This shows the construction of the dome in August 1940. AWM XS0129

Left: The initial joint architectural design, approved in 1927, by Emil Sodersteen and John Crust. AWM XS0002

Right: Emil Sodersteen’s plaster model of his modified design of 1938. AWM XS0060

Left: Official guests on the dais at the opening ceremony of the Memorial. At far right with medals is Charles Bean. AWM P01313.001