Academic literature on the topic 'Romaldo Giurgola'

This paper explores the design concept of the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, which is achieved by international design competition won by Romaldo Giurgola. As a foreigner, his achievement winning the international competition for the new Australian Parliament House was remarkable. He was successfully applied the historic and symbolic values from the early Canberra master plan by Walter and Marion Griffin into his work, and he was also influenced by other architect’s works such as Louis Khan.

The Catholic diocese of Parramatta is well-known as the first established Catholic Church in Australia. It is the most recently completed Cathedral in Australia, designed by Romaldo Giurgola. As a foreigner, he was successfully applied the historical values and symbols of Catholic tradition shown on the design’s elements and forms throughout the Cathedral. This paper explores the design of the Cathedral Church of the Catholic diocese of Parramatta which is influenced by works of other architects such as Utzon and Van Eyck. The use of natural light and different materials’ quality in the interior and exterior of building are few of the design’s elements applied in the Saint Patrick Cathedral.

This research thesis examines the mature work of the architect Romaldo Giurgola in Australia. Born in 1920 in Rome, Italy, Giurgola is best known in Australia for the design of the New Parliament House, a significant contribution to Australian architecture. Yet his work beyond the parliament building has received scant attention. It is little recognised that after his decision to reside permanently in Canberra, and later becoming an Australian citizen in 2000, Giurgola designed several buildings in Australia, and two international commissions from his Canberra base. Colin St John Wilson describes an ‘Other Tradition of Modern Architecture’ (1995) in which, rather than being an isolated movement in architectural history, he positions Modernism as an ‘uncompleted project’, one that continually emphasizes a response to specific physical and social contexts rather than the expression of abstract theories. Examining four of Giurgola’s Australian buildings, this thesis casts Giurgola’s Australian work in St John Wilson’s ‘other tradition’ of modernism. Giurgola’s geographic and intellectual traverse provides a unique journey through post-war architectural theory and practice from his architectural education in the Beaux-Arts tradition to the upheaval on the East Coast of the United States in the 1960s to the diffusion of post–modernism in Australia. His response to the specific architectural task is a continual negotiation between a set of contextual concerns, technology and his idiosyncratic concepts of ‘home’ and ‘citizenship’. I argue that the formal tension Giurgola creates between elements in his architecture reflects the complexity of contexts in which he worked, and is what, although stylistically different, brings together the work of architects that may at first glance be quite dissimilar to Giurgola such as Australian architects Glenn Murcutt, Troppo Architects, Ashton Raggatt McDougall, and Richard Leplastrier. Further, I argue that Giurgola’s encounter with Australia was a transforming experience in which he found that the discontinuity and calculated incompletion of Nordic modernism was a good fit for Australia. The study provides new insight into the mature work of an architect who has contributed substantially to Australian architecture, and, through the parliament building, to Australia’s image of governance.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Architecture and Built Environment, 2015.